In Ladakh, conservation meets hospitality, but it also has costs.
A large cat enters poorly built livestock pens and kills multiple sheep and goats, creating a dent in the local farming economy. Yet its elegance attracts tourists from across the globe. As tourist footfall increases, an innovative way of generating sustainable tourism in some of the remotest parts of the Himalayas gains traction. Locals spruce up their homes to accommodate visitors coming to see the cat.
This initiative provides local communities with the opportunity to generate additional income, while allowing tourists to experience their culture first-hand. Most importantly, it ensures the long-term survival of the cats. This is the story of the snow leopard, inspiring conservationists to revolutionize hospitality in the mountains of the Himalayas.
Three decades ago, the indigenous people of Ladakh considered the snow leopard to be a major threat to their livelihoods. When a cat would break stealthily into a livestock pen at night, irate farmers killed the culprit in retaliation. Today, the snow leopard is worth more alive than dead. Thanks to the initiatives of the Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust (SLC-IT), which pioneered the concept of conservation-linked homestays in 2002, the economic landscape of rural Ladakh has transformed.
The award-winning Himalayan Homestay Program executed by the organization enabled Ladakhi people to host tourists in their homes, ultimately contributing towards snow leopard conservation. Following protracted discussions with villagers in the Hemis National Park back in 2000, SLC-IT turned people’s homes along trekking trails into homestays and exhorted tourists to stay in these homes instead of camping, thereby reducing pressure on pastures for wild animals. Initially, surveys were conducted to find out tourists’ preferences and villagers’ willingness to let trekkers stay in their homes.
Notwithstanding initial acceptance, several homestays were recalcitrant, and it took some coaxing and cajoling to convince them. As tourist footfall increased in these homestays enhancing villagers’ incomes, farmers’ attitude towards snow leopard softened. With time, local farmers have changed into ardent supporters of wildlife conservation, leading to a paradigm shift for snow leopard conservation in the region.
The passes are so high, and the climate is so harsh that only the best of friends or the worst of enemies would like to visit us.
One evening in Ladakh, after trekking along treacherous trails for hours, I arrived at a low pass and spotted a beautiful house perched atop a hillock. The mountain tops were awash in the golden light of the spring sun. Slowly, I descended to the house. Tsering Morup, the owner, was tending to yak calves below and greeted me with a broad smile and the quintessential “julley (hello)” as soon as he saw me.
Tsering Morup and his wife tending yak below his homestay.
After a brief conversation, he led me to the family’s kitchen-cum-drawing room and served a copious amount of butter tea, yosza (roasted barley mixed with walnut), and an assortment of snacks on a low traditional table. Soon steamed momos (wheat-flour dumplings stuffed with minced meat) were served with tomato, onion, and red chili chutney. Such is the service and hospitality at a typical homestay.
As tourism in Ladakh experienced exponential growth, however, many began to view it as a potential Frankenstein’s Monster. The active promotion of snow leopard tourism by SLC-IT helped ease this fear, as the program is the epitome of sustainable tourism. At the core of sustainability are four aspects – the first being that enterprise must start small and second that it grows slowly in increments.
A kitchen-cum-drawing room of a typical homestay.
The third involves using locally sourced materials to grow the business to ensure the fourth aspect – local control over affairs. The Himalayan Homestays Program ticks all these boxes. Today the newly carved Union Territory of Ladakh has adopted this program to promote sustainable rural tourism.
The local government is providing homestay packages at large scale, although without the conservation linkage that is the hallmark of homestays supported by SLC-IT. Furthermore, new criteria have been set, such as it now being mandatory for people to have flush toilets in the homestays, which is out of sync with the local ecology of Ladakh where water is a scarce commodity. SLC-IT always emphasized the traditional composting toilet for using compost for growing vegetables. Therefore, whether the scaling up in this way proves to be beneficial or detrimental remains to be seen.
A homestay in the Sham valley.
The Himalayan Homestays Program has also been instrumental in empowering women. As most homestays are run by women, the program offers them the opportunity for financial independence from their husbands, to learn new languages by interacting with tourists, and education on hygiene and waste disposal practices. The income from homestays ensures the economic well-being of women and enables them to send their children to good schools. These factors further incentivize villagers to coexist with snow leopards.
Growing snow leopard tourism exhorts people to attract the predator to their villages. The retaliatory killings in the villages have ceased, positively impacting snow leopard population. The upgrade of snow leopard from ‘Endangered’ to ‘Vulnerable’ species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species in 2017 can be viewed as a tribute to the efforts of villagers such as the ones in Ladakh who have worked hard to conserve the snow leopard.
A snow leopard mother and her two cubs marching down a slope in Zanskar.
In addition, tourists who visit the villages and rest in homestays always look for souvenirs. Given the difficulty of finding artifacts with cultural significance, the need arose to develop handicrafts in the region to boost the souvenir market. A comprehensive handicraft development strategy was devised to revitalize traditional arts and crafts such as rock engraving, wood carving, and carpet weaving. Furthermore, new crafts related to wildlife have been pioneered.
One such craft is sculpting soft toy animals from locally sourced wool. Using a technique called dry needle felting, craftspeople turn a mass of wool into exquisite toy animals – generating another diverse source of income, especially for families who are unable to host tourists in their homes. This ensures equitable distribution of income among households in the villages.
Tsewang Norbu from Ulley felting a toy ibex.
Homestays have other tangible benefits. Ten percent of the income from homestays is set aside for conservation, preventing homestays from becoming purely commercial activities. The conservation fund is used for the cleaning and maintenance of villages, trekking trails, plantations, and monuments. SLC-IT has partnered with the Border Roads Organization (BRO) to manage garbage in the villages.
SLC-IT collects discarded metal drums from BRO camps and roadsides after they have been emptied of bitumen, cleans and paints the drums, then provides them to the villagers to use as dustbins. Otherwise, these drums become death traps for small mammals and lizards walking on to the residual bitumen melted inside them during the hot summer months.
Another program providing additional income opportunity is nature guide training, whereby willing villagers, especially youths and school dropouts, are trained as nature guides. This prevents urban drift, as youth generate income by showing tourists the local flora, fauna, and cultural assets around their villages, avoiding the need to migrate to urban centers to earn a living.
The youth take great pride in the new knowledge they acquire through such training. Having learned about animals such as pine trees, deer, tigers, and elephants in their classrooms, these youths often lack crucial knowledge about the local flora and fauna in the mountains surrounding their villages.
Tsewang Namgail inculcating ecological values in students.
Therefore, this supplementary activity related to homestays also empowers the youth. Many of them become successful entrepreneurs promoting nature-based tourism.
“The passes are so high, and the climate is so harsh that only the best of friends or the worst of enemies would like to visit us.” This Ladakhi adage speaks volumes about the modesty of the Ladakhi people regarding their land. Today the climate is getting warmer, and the passes can be crossed by airplane.
In the end, Ladakh is visited by hordes of people who are indifferent towards its people, nature, and culture, which can be detrimental to its biodiversity and culture.
The Himalayan Homestays Program has played a pivotal role in pre-empting major damages. We hope that this program continues to cater to the needs of the snow leopards, people, and tourists for years to come.
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