In the early 2000s, Arjun Majumdar and his mates would frequently trek in the Indian Himalaya. What they often struggled with while planning the logistics of their trip was finding genuine information on the route and resources along the way.
The predicament got him thinking. He decided to pen a guidebook on trekking to Roopkund, a high-altitude lake in Uttarakhand. A few weeks after The Roopkund Trek Guide (2007) was published, he started receiving calls from locals who lived in the region.
“They said a lot of trekkers had started visiting after reading the guidebook and they were getting meaningful work,” Majumdar recalls.
It laid the foundation for Indiahikes, a trekking company based in Bengaluru that Majumdar co-founded in 2008 with Sandhya UC. Roopkund was one of their first offerings. Until then, the trail drew the odd trekker, and was mainly used by locals or devotees on the Nanda Devi Raj Jat pilgrimage.
It didn’t take long for the trek to get noticed—the climb through a cool alpine forest, the lush meadow of Bedni Bugyal that offered stunning views of Trisul and Nanda Ghunti, and the legend of the “skeleton lake” that Roopkund is also known as. As these photos flooded the internet, the interest in trekking increased. There were few barriers to entry—anyone with a tent and a basic understanding of the route started running the trek to cater to the demand. It drew hordes as the years progressed; in 2017-18, around 6,100 trekkers visited the area. With no waste management or supervision in place, the fragile ecosystem suffered over time.
Respite came through an Uttarakhand high court order in 2018, which banned overnight camping on meadows across the state. Since Bedni Bugyal is an essential stopover on the trek, Roopkund has been off limits ever since.
According to Vaibhav Kala, who has been running Delhi-based Aquaterra Adventures for over three decades, trekking in India had a slow start in the 1980s and most enthusiasts then were foreigners. Indians gradually warmed up to the outdoors, and the scene exploded over the last 15 years. The result has been a burgeoning and unregulated trekking industry.
“Most of these operations were initially run by outdoorsmen. Now, it’s a business idea with no entry regulations. Mass trekking, back-to-back trips, digging toilet pits on the meadows and overloaded horses, it’s reached a different end of the spectrum. The governments are clueless, rules are on paper and ground realities are very different,” Kala says.
While the Roopkund area breathes easy, the fate of a number of other regions hangs in the balance. Most trails that suffer are the ones that are easy to access and offer instant gratification through stunning vistas. During season, it draws a lot of trekkers, leading to crowded trails and overburdened campsites, besides having an impact on the fragile environment.
Ankit Naithani, who runs trekking company Wandering Boots in Dehradun, recalls Hampta Pass in Himachal Pradesh to be a very different trail a decade ago.
“The last time I went in 2019, it was like a yatra. The trek was being offered at a third of the cost and the trail was packed. Locals saw value in setting up dhabas along the trail to cater to this crowd. It was a mess,” he says.
Pricing has been a major factor on the popular routes. For instance, a six-day trip to Dayara Bugyal, one of the easier treks in Uttarakhand, costs anywhere from ₹11,000-60,000 depending on the operator one signs up with. The stark difference has a lot to do with the amenities offered and the group size—the more hikers there are, the cheaper it gets.
When Indiahikes began operations, one of its goals was to ensure that everyone had the opportunity to trek and experience the beauty of the mountains. “While pricing our treks, we thought of what a middle-class person could afford and then worked backwards to see if we could make it work,” Majumdar says.
Indiahikes often runs frequent treks on the popular routes—for instance, they have 14 trips to Dayara Bugyal in June. With a continual stream of trekkers, they establish fixed camps en route. While there are detractors of fixed camping—as it can impact the environment and makes it possible for more people to trek there—Majumdar believes it has a lower impact on the environment.
“In New Zealand or Switzerland, you find trekker huts on the popular routes. These are nothing but fixed camps, which work best when you have a lot of trekkers. For instance, you can dig deeper holes to create toilet pits that can eventually be covered up and allowed to recover, instead of creating smaller cat holes every time. Moving camps require gear to be carried by mules that will constantly trample the trail and graze the meadows,” he says.
He explains that the company has launched Green Trails, an initiative to promote eco-friendly practices such as trash segregation, composting and reducing single-use plastic on all its treks and trails, spending about 15% of its income on sustainable practices.
Responsible trekking, however, has a long way to go, especially with no monitoring in these remote areas. It’s easier to dump trash or burn it instead of ferrying it back to the nearest facility. And like the Chadar trek in Ladakh, where there are just a handful of spots to set up camp along the Zanskar river, waste management and sanitation is often an afterthought. Not everyone is in favour of the democratisation of trekking.
“In the absence of trekking policies, fixed camps and conveyor-belt operations are beating the pricing. The awareness is missing with Indian customers because they are driven by cost-based pricing rather than value-based pricing. So their benchmark is a mass experience, whereas trekking from its inception was always small groups visiting remote areas,” says Kala.
It’s a double-edged sword for those who live around the trails. On the one hand, trekking brings employment as guides or support staff, on the other there’s also the environmental impact on their surroundings. Locals have, in some cases, demanded action and made difficult decisions. Climbing Stok Kangri, a peak near Leh, for instance, was halted in 2019 after locals asked for a respite. What was supposed to be a three-month ban has continued till date, even though the local administration has been keen on restarting it due to its popularity.
“There were just too many people visiting during the season and poorly managed higher camps. It contaminated the glacier water that most villages lower down depend on. Then, the mules that hauled equipment and ration overgrazed the pastures, leaving little for local livestock. The villagers of Stok demanded that they shut it down,” says Skalzang Rigzin, president of the Ladakh Mountain Guide Association (LMGA).
A few trekking routes such as Gaumukh-Tapovan in Gangotri National Park or Ruinsara Tal in Govind Pashu Vihar National Park and Wildlife Sanctuary in Uttarakhand are fairly protected since access to these areas requires permission and fees. While checkposts exist at the starting point of a few treks, Majumdar sees the need for them to be positioned along the trail.
Besides the toll on the environment, unregulated trekking has resulted in multiple casualties over the last decade, due to lack of guidelines on who is qualified to lead treks, which results in inability to properly understand the weather or how to react in an emergency. Nine trekkers perished on a trek to Sahastra Tal in Uttarakhand in 2024; earlier this year, a foreign national suffered injuries while descending from Triund near Dharamsala in Himachal Pradesh and though he was rescued, he died by the time he was brought to the hospital. The Adventure Tour Operators Association of India (ATOAI) has been working to ensure better practices across the industry, including a model law for adventure safety and establishing adventure tourism rescue centres for emergencies.
A possible model for sustainable trekking would be neighbouring Bhutan where crowds are regulated. Every visitor is charged a sustainable development fee each day ( ₹1,200 for Indians and $100 for most other nationalities), while the trekking charges per day can be as much as $200 for an individual, depending on the size of the group. Trekking is only permitted through licensed operators, who arrange for permits, a qualified guide, cook and support staff.
Until a Central policy is implemented, it will be down to private initiatives to put a system in place. Besides Green Trails, Indiahikes is partnering the Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir state governments to work with guides on skills development to impart best practices that must be followed while trekking
The LMGA has put regulations in place to ensure that treks running across Ladakh are safe and sustainable. “Every guide, whether they are locals or outsiders, must register with LMGA. Only if they’re qualified as per our criteria are they issued NOCs (no-objection certificates) and allowed to lead treks,” Rigzin says.
“We carry out regular checks at campsites on the frequented routes as well. After what happened on Stok Kangri, there is more awareness towards keeping the environment clean. Because if one village can shut down a trek, it can happen anywhere,” he adds.
Guides at LMGA have also started looking at opening alternative trails around Ladakh. Rampant road construction is gradually reducing the walkable sections on classic treks in the Markha Valley and towards Zanskar.
While new routes could significantly reduce the burden on the treks being currently offered, Majumdar sees the need for more engagement at the government level—the district administration, forest officials and ecotourism departments— when it comes to managing trails, rather than leaving it to private organisations. He cites the example of Trek Tamil Nadu, an initiative started by the Tamil Nadu forest department, where treks are led by trained guides who make it a safe and meaningful experience. Or treks that Indiahikes runs in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh that have been established in collaboration with the state governments.
Naithani’s first trek to Saurkundi Pass in 2013 was alongside 40 others. After pursuing his certification, he worked as a trek leader with an organisation for a couple of years. The two experiences gave him clarity on how he wanted to run operations once he set up his own company in 2018.
“I saw the working of big groups and it wasn’t something that interested me. A large part of the trekking experience is seclusion while soaking in the wilderness. With so many people on the trail, the essence of being outdoors is defeated,” he says.
His last trek in May took him to Nanda Devi East base camp, a remote corner of eastern Uttarakhand. The winding 300km drive from the railway station in Haldwani to the closest town, Munsyari takes close to 10 hours.
“This isn’t a new area, but is less frequented given how long it takes just to get to the trailhead. The trails were clean and we encountered just three other trekkers during the week. And a lot of signs of wildlife, shy and not used to human presence. These are the kind of experiences I would like to share in the time ahead,” he says.
Shail Desai is a Mumbai-based freelance writer.