Remembering Chadar Trek…
Image below, of porters drag sledges on a frozen Zanskar River, facilitating us on ‘Chadar Trek’.
It was about seven years ago that I walked on the now well-known Chadar Trek–a fascinating walk on the ice-sheets of Zanskar in winter months. We walked for nearly two weeks, crossing over from Indus Valley to the habitations in Zanskar region. We walked over thick and thin ice and sometimes had to face climbing challenges where the ice-surface was completely broken.
In the year that we were there, we noticed no more than a handful of trekkers along the path and occasional Zanskar-locals trying to get to Leh on the ice-road. It was a near-empty path on the ice.
The recent years, I have been told, have seen an explosion of people trying to get on Chadar. It has come with its share of environmental consequences, such as porters cutting away the last of the trees for firewood and too much human activity degrading the ice surface. Some travellers have complained about accumulating trash and human waste. The narrow river gorge has very little plain spaces in its banks and trekkers have even had difficulties finding ground to pitch tents in the crowded camping locations.
Looking back at all this and my own journey across the ice-river, it is obvious that I have been one of the contributors to the transformation of a region of astounding beauty into just-another-place that contributed to human need for entertainment. Being one of the early visitors to the area and having written about it and talked about it many forums, I have perhaps had my contributions to popularizing the region as well (you can see several stories by searching within this blog).
This brings me to a larger question, where I only have questions at the moment without any answers. How do we make our insatiable desire to be everywhere a sustainable one that leaves no damaging footprints? The work is on; I am, as lot of travellers are, increasingly looking forward to making our journeys environment conscious, and hoping to taking more concrete steps in the direction with progress in time.