RANIKHET - From this Himalayan town about 380 kilometers from Delhi, my first view of mystical Nandi Devi was one of those velvet-cloaked, sledge-hammer moments in life that softly stuns the senses and leaves one wordless.
Golden early morning sunlight lit the snow-capped 7,800-meter peak, India's highest, as Nanda Devi glowed with strength, stillness, purity, silence - an awe-inspiring sight in the crisp mountain air. Tourist guides in Seventh Heaven and other next-life holiday paradises may not have many prettier sights to sell.
Meaning "Blessed Goddesses", "Princess of Mountains", "Bliss-Giving Goddess" or, perhaps more accurately, "Mother Goddess
of the Mountain", the Nanda Devi area is an United Nations-declared World Heritage Park that ranks among major attractions in Uttarakhand, a state in north India also called "Dev Bhumi" or "Land of Gods".
The gods can't be faulted for their taste in real estate, as the Nanda Devi region, including the Valley of Flowers and the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, form one of the more spectacular scenic spots in South Asia.
But beautiful worldly paradises generally have a blighted side and Nanda Devi too, like its more famous cousin Mount Everest, is fighting off an onslaught of pollution, unruly development and other damage from a careless human presence.
Adding to its woes, the Nanda Devi region has been suffering strange weather patterns in recent weeks, particularly worrying busy adventure tourism operators like Arvind Bharadwaj.
"It's snowing hard in the month of May when the snows should be melting, and raining when the weather should be dry for trekkers and climbers," Bharadwaj told Asia Times Online after returning to Rishikesh on June 11 from a trekking expedition to the Nanda Devi east base camp.
In contrast, in January the ski resort of Auli in the region had to pack up right in the middle of its peak winter business period due to a lack of snowfall. The prolonged recession already has the regional tourist industry reeling with a 19-month low in business.
Bharadwaj blames the weird weather changes on the foolish local governmental policy of allowing plastic-roofed hothouse farming to spread unchecked in the area. "The heat from these plastic hothouses is devastating the local ecology," he said. "The media have not yet covered this aspect of problems Nanda Devi faces."
These climatic changes are rapidly melting glaciers on Nanda Devi, part of the larger problem of depleting Himalayan glaciers that supply 8.6 million cubic meters of water annually to Asian rivers.
Himalayan glacier-dependant major Asian rivers, also among the world's longest, include China's Yangtze and Yellow rivers, India's Ganges and the Indus that starts in Tibet and flows through India and Pakistan, the Brahmaputra in India and Bangladesh and Myanmar's Irrawaddy.
Scientists say the population of South Asia and China, comprising 40% of humanity, will face a severe water crisis in 50 years if the current melting rate of Himalayan glaciers continues.
A United Nations report released on June 10 warned of over 500 million people being displaced worldwide by the year 2050 as fallout from climate changes and resultant wrecked agriculture systems.
The Tokyo-based United Nations University Center conducted the June 10 study, along with the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University, and the Atlanta-based CARE International.
The UN report also grimly predicted that 1.4 billion people in Southeast Asia, India and China, or a quarter of the human race, would be affected by melting Himalayan glaciers.
The melting rate appears alarmingly high within the Nanda Devi group of glaciers which include the larger Nanda Devi north and south glaciers that are each about 19 kilometers long, as well as the smaller Ramani, Kururntoli, Nandakna and Bartoli glaciers.
"The Nanda Devi glaciers are coming down the mountain slopes so fast that one can actually see the glacier tracks left behind in the last 15 years," said Bharadwaj. Well-behaved glaciers are supposed to move invisibly in inches across hundreds of years, not rush down mountain sides like kids in a kindergarten playground slide.
"The other critical issue is the commissioning of the large hydro-electric projects in the area," said Sunil Kainthola, coordinator of Mountain Shepherds, an ecotourism operator in Dehradun, the Uttarakhand state capital 45 km from Rishikesh. "There appears to be an unholy alliance between the development and conservation agencies."
Kainthola said mountain communities were having the worst of both worlds - displaced both in the name of conservation as well as development. "While conservationists have consolidated their territories in the upper reaches of the Himalayas, the Himalayan valleys are being colonized by public and private entities for hydro-power generation," he said. "This is also happening in the bufferzone of the Nanda Devi Biosphere. You are not allowed to graze a few goats in the name of conservation, but are allowed to blast the mountains for hydro-electric projects."
These commercial, climatic and conservation commotions are the latest stormy chapters in the three-decade ecology battles to protect Nanda Devi. Polluting adventure seekers caused damage enough for the government of India and UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) to close Nanda Devi in 1982 and declare the area a protected national park and biosphere reserve.
An Indian expedition in 1993 removed one ton of tourist litter from the Nanda Devi mountainside. Tourists now need permission from the local forestry department to enter the Nanda Devi area. Groups can have a maximum of five members and only two groups at a time are permitted in the area in one day, and four groups in a week. Children below 14 are not allowed to enter the Nanda Devi biosphere.
Problems multiplied for Nanda Devi after its fierce natural defenses were first breached in the 1930s. Before then, the mountain that locals consider sacred was protected by an imposing ring of over a dozen peaks, each over 6,400 meters, and the near impregnable 6,000-meter Rishi Ganga gorge. Nanda Devi defeated several 19th-century attempts by Western explorers to enter her heart.
In 1934, maverick British explorers Eric Shipton and William Tilman and their three Sherpa companions, Angtharkay, Pasang and Kusang, finally managed to access the upper Rishi Valley inner sanctum of the Mountain Goddess. Nanda Devi apparently approved of their burden-free approach of traveling light, carrying minimal gear and luggage in their expedition.
In the 1939 book Nanda Devi, Shipton described his first feelings on entering the forbidden inner ring of Nanda Devi valley:
Each step I experienced that subtle thrill which anyone of imagination must feel when treading in hitherto unexplored country. Each corner held some thrilling secret to be revealed for the trouble of looking. My most blissful dream was to be in some such valley, free to wander where I liked, and discover for myself some hitherto unrevealed glory of Nature. Now the reality was no less wonderful than that half-forgotten dream; and of how many childish fancies can that be said, in this age of disillusionment?
Seventy years later, Shipton and Tillman may be excused for wanting to dunk in the roaring Ganges the noisy motorbike gangs of "pilgrims" who clog the 21st-century approach to Nanda Devi, on the 264 km road from Rishikesh to Joshimath town, about 40 km from the India-Tibet border. The Nanda Devi north face is approached from Lata Village, 25 km from Joshimath, a drab, dreary, dingy town that appears not to have had a new lick of paint in the past 50 years.
"The quieter and more beautiful approach to Nanda Devi is through Almora [town] to the Nanda Devi east base camp," said Arvind Bharadwaj. Trekkers describe this route facing the Panch Chuli range, or Five Mountains, as dotted with "fairytale townships with rolling meadows, sleepy bazaars, untouched villages and open valleys".
The "fairytale townships" are actually deserted ghost towns that once flourished when the ancient Silk Route was active across India to China through Tibet. Villages such as Milam and Niti are now abandoned ruins of a once thriving India-Tibetan trade in the Himalayan heart, of goods being bartered or sold after being carried through high mountain passes. In his last visit this June, Bharadwaj counted only three families living among the ruins of Milam.
These political, economic and conservation changes in recent decades have upturned lives of the simple, hospitable people living in Nanda Devi region, particularly the Indo-Tibetan tribe of Bhotiyas in the Nanda Devi biosphere.
Some relief for the mountain tribals appeared with non-governmental agencies, such as the US-funded Nanda Devi Campaign that fights to return the rights of locals that were taken away when the government declared the Nanda Devi a protected area.
The Bhotiyas lost their livelihood after forest officials included them too in restrictions to access Nanda Devi reserves. The bungling bureaucrats threw the baby out with the bathwater, by seeing the Bhotiyas as part of the problem instead of as natural guardians of Nanda Devi.
"While the ecological situation has improved considerably, the economic situation of the Bhotiya community remains the same", Sunil Kainthola of Mountain Shepherds informed Asia Times Online. "The issue of restoration of access rights has become irrelevant as the traditional knowledge and skills structure has collapsed in between."
Kainthola explains that the younger generation has lost interest in traditional occupations such as grazing. "Neither are there enough goats, sheep nor are there skilled herders to revive the woolen industry”, he said. "However there is a temporary phase of quick wealth generation through collection of the fungus 'Yarsa Gumba' during the summer period. Though it brings instant money, the unchecked exploitation without any concern for sustainable use and the inter-village rivalry to redefine village boundaries is a serious concern."
Other international efforts try to spread more global awareness, such as the Adventure Summer Course in May last year in which 15 American students from the Georgia Southern University and North Carolina's Appalachian State University came for a three-week study tour of the Garhwal Himalayas range, which includes Nanda Devi.
Eco-friendly adventure tour operators such as the Mountain Shepherds in Dehradun and Red Chilli Adventures in Rishikesh form the next line of defense at Nanda Devi.
"The UNESCO and government of India should consider further opening of the Nanda Devi Core Zone in a phased manner with strict monitoring and community involvement, " said Kainthola, who also fears for mountain communities losing both their land and political representation through unchecked migration from land developers. "At the end peace will be the victim," he warns.