BackA better Rohtang Pass
Rationing of vehicular movement is the least the National Green Tribunal can do for the beautiful and historic Rohtang Pass
PremiumThere is nothing in the restrictions recently ordered by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) on tourists going to the Rohtang Pass in Himachal Pradesh that can stop young, strapping men from taking their shirt off and waving it in the air.
There is nothing that will stop tourists from emptying their beer bottles and then relieving themselves on the snow slopes of Rohtang (yes, many tourists to Rohtang love their beer while rolling around in the snow). The order does not even mention that throwing these empty beer bottles there is not a cool idea either.
What the NGT order—it has asked the Himachal government to restrict the number of visitors to Rohtang to 1,000 daily for the three-month tourist season starting May, with petrol and diesel vehicles paying ₹ 1,000 and ₹ 2,500, respectively, as environment cess—might do is minimise the daily defilement suffered by the ecologically fragile, high-altitude pass at over 13,000ft. The NGT website mentions a 2010 expert committee report, according to which, 10,000 people and nearly 3,600 vehicles visit the Rohtang Pass daily, with both numbers seeing a steady increase.
About 52km from the tourist haven of Manali, a visit to an easily reachable destination like Rohtang Pass, a trekker friend of mine once noted, is to experience snow without much toil. “Snow for cheap," he had said. Indeed, for a country that lives and works in the gruelling heat of the plains, the Rohtang Pass exposes the collective chinks in our understanding and relationship with nature. The terrain can only be faulted for being strikingly beautiful.
Passing through the Rohtang Pass has increasingly become a primer to the sordidness often seen in our city lives. Here, suddenly, at glacial height, is a serpentine build-up of honking tourist vehicles, erratically parked ones and some others blaring music at extreme volumes.
In 2001, when I was passing through Rohtang Pass after spending three weeks in the Lahaul-Spiti region of Upper Himachal, the window seat of the Himachal Road Transport Corporation bus, in which I was travelling from Keylong, afforded a ringside view of a great human circus. Over the 3-hour traffic jam, men moved around, bare-chested with beer bottles in hand. Some openly relieved themselves along the ice wall side of the road. Youngsters in SUVs screamed, while bewildered bus passengers searched for a reason on their behalf. Broken beer bottles littered the place. Middle-aged women in Keds-like shoes and floaters attempted walking on the snowy inclines. One such lady twisted her ankle and groaned in pain. Children stuck their hands out of car windows and sucked on the snow, which had turned a little crusty and sooty black from absorbing diesel fumes.
If this was an exhibition in a kind of innocence, it was in equal parts idiotic.
Now, look away from the alluringly photoshopped, wide-angle lens grab of Rohtang Pass on tourist brochures. The NGT website notes that the snow in nearby Keylong receded by an astounding 357% between 1990 and 2000. Forty per cent of glacial retreat is attributed to the impact of black carbon, with vehicular emission being the biggest villain. Between 2010-12, Kothi village, on the road to Rohtang, accounted for total suspended particulate (TSP) matter way above the permissible limit—a situation unthinkable for a high-altitude Himalayan village.
The restriction of vehicular movement suggested by the NGT is the least man can do for nature, since force-feeding a sense of sanctity for the mountains to the Rohtang revellers will be an uphill task. The stiff environment fee levied on each vehicle comes too from the principle of “polluter pays", where the polluter bears the remedial or clean-up costs. The sensitive tourist too can benefit from a better Rohtang experience as much as from being a contributor to the place’s long-term survival.
Connecting Himachal Pradesh and the rest of India with Ladakh, in Jammu and Kashmir, the Rohtang Pass forms part of an ancient route of travel; the difficulty in its crossing being the reason behind the literal translation of the name in the Tibetic Bhoti language as “pile of corpses". Back then, people died at Rohtang. It’s modern-day, easy accessibility shouldn’t make Rohtang Pass any less consecrated.
Unlock a world of Benefits! From insightful newsletters to real-time stock tracking, breaking news and a personalized newsfeed – it's all here, just a click away! Login Now!
