RESPONSIBLE TRAVELLING- TRAVEL GREEN

Trekking and hiking has become a somewhat must do thing in every traveller's list of things to do, or you can say a tourist. While many will argue about whether there exists any difference between a traveller and a tourist, it is the truth that there is a difference. A traveller travels to enjoy the beauty of nature and fulfil his/her sense of adventure, at the same time, sacrificing luxuries and comforts. On the other hand, a tourist visits a place to just see the main attractions and floods his/her social media with pictures to boast to the world. A traveller protects the environment while the tourist doesn't care. Both are travelling but for different reasons.

Due to the sudden surge of tourist traffic in the pristine areas of Himalayas in recent years, the ecology of these vulnerable places is depleting at a fast pace. Every year in summers and winters, a lot of people from around the country, visit the popular places of Manali, Shimla, Mussoorie etc. and even lesser known places have started getting a lot of tourist traffic, all thanks to social media.



Sometime back, trekking and hiking were undertaken by selective people who were adventure seekers and when social media was non-existent. These people were nature lovers and while travelling, took care of the environment. The high mountains of Himalayas, cut off from the world, had unexplored beauty and very few people reached these places with great difficulty, to explore the unknown valleys, the hidden flora and fauna and relish in the beauty of the snow capped mountains. With the advent of improved transport services and influx of Tourists in recent years visiting all these places, they have made the fragile ecosystem of these places much more vulnerable. Throwing garbage and littering in rivers, waterfalls, mountain sides, forests, trekking trails and wherever possible, has become rampant everywhere. Any person who has visited Manali, Shimla or any other such place in the mountains will be quite aware of this fact that there are heaps of garbage piling near rivers, mountain sides and plastic bottles, wrappers etc. can be found lying on mountain slopes. Due to this attitude of the tourists, the government of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand have even banned camping in many trekking spots like Kheerganga in order to protect the environment from destruction. The local people, who had protected and revered these mountains and rivers since a long time, have become frustrated by the outsiders depleting their environment. The local NGOs have undertaken cleaning drives to clean these places of garbage.

There is a need for responsible travelling in today's times so that we can relish the beauty of these places and protect them for destruction at the same time. All these places which the nature has bestowed on us should not be turned into a thing of the past. Hence, while travelling we should take care of the following and enjoy at the same time:

1. Never throw garbage in rivers, streams or slopes
2. Throw plastic cans, bottles and other waste in the dustbin or keep them in a bag till you find a dustbin
3. Reduce the use of plastic, wherever possible
4. Advice your friends and family to do the same
5. Trekking organizations should ensure that there is no littering on trekking trails.

TRAVEL GREEN

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