By ATUL RAWAT
There was a time when we heard about the pristine beauty of hill stations. The word pristine conjured up the image of a peaceful place, snowcapped mountains, crisp cool breeze and quiet walks through the pine trees. There was this romantic thought of embracing the solitude and detoxification of body and soul in the hills. The beauty of hills, the snowcapped peaks, lush green valleys and the whisper of the breeze – nature in communication with humans. There was peaceful co-existence.
This fine balance between nature and humans, in the past few years, has got lost in the ravaging of these pristine locations by the insensitive tourists. First to go is the peace and quiet which is now replaced with the loud and brash display of modern us, who are just hell bent on destroying the same peace and quiet for which we commenced our journey from their metros. Perpetual traffic jam, loud honking and even louder music now is in constant display in these pristine hill stations. Loads of garbage accompanies these tourists – plastic bottles, beer cans, liquor bottles, chips packets, cigarettes and the like. It is just casually thrown out of the speeding vehicle.
The mountains never saw this coming.
These hill stations and the mountains that surround them have stood quietly and majestically for centuries. They survived the ups and downs of the rise and fall of civilisations and natural calamities. But nothing prepared them for the tourist who is neither modern nor sensitive.
One is not sure if the tourist today visits the mountains or just attacks them.
Typically, the journey begins just when a weekend starts with hundreds of SUVs zipping uphill spewing black smoke and loud horns in their wake and, soon, we see traffic crawling through Dehradun, Mussoorie and Nainital.
Once they arrive, the ritual begins. Blasting music and an aggressive display of urban arrogance and the desire to capture the mountains in their social media reels. One seldom sees someone just soaking the energy of the mountains in a peaceful manner respecting the locals and their customs. When they arrive in the mountains they carry their metro life with them.
The valley and the mountain shed a silent tear.
Besides the decibels which the hill stations endure they also are subjected to the great culinary contribution of tourism to the mountains and famed sites such as Kempty Falls — plastic. Chips packets and beer cans flutter through pine forests like patriotic flags of consumerism. Water bottles roll gracefully into rivers as we see in Rishikesh. Disposable plates pose along trekking trails. They come to the mountains as crass consumers of commercialisation, and not as travelers. They come to extract entertainment rather than experience humility. They measure beauty in likes, silence in decibels and rivers in selfie angles.
The tourist is unmindful of all this mayhem and tops it with a lengthy caption on his social media feed – “I love Mussoorie ❤️.”
This message is usually uploaded seconds after throwing a beer can into the waterfall.
The cafes and bars just feed this mindless consumerism.
Somewhere along the way, humility disappeared from travel.
The mountain can no longer escape the loud DJ remixes pulsating late into the night through the valley while these tourists have their good time.
The locals watch all this in a painful and stoic manner. Their rivers shrink, forests vanish and roads collapse every monsoon, yet they still smile politely at the tourists.
Each year the hills scream warnings through floods, sinking roads and falling rocks. But humanity hears only opportunity.
I am sure in the long run, tourism will survive, travel perhaps will not.
