Monthly Archives: May 2008

Hot issues, River Rafting

River rafting in Pahalgam – status 2008 and the players involved

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Sight seeing, pony-rides or do-nothing vacationing aside, what really can Pahalgam offer to visiting tourists? Come to think of it, Pahalgam has its own gold mine in the form of meandering river lidder, and miles and miles of it both from Aru and Chandanwari which offer a great, world class opportunity for river rafting. Thus far, it seems like the officials have failed to realize what they are sitting on. It has been left onto small time entrepreneurs to harness this opportunity. And like the story of rest of India, they are able to pull through, inspite of all the odds. But only till a point. Objections are now being raised from many quarters.
I am optimistic that its only a matter of time when the Pahalgam Development Authority, or Tourism Department or the Fisheries Department will put their act together and lay out a holistic plan which will benefit both the locals and the tousists, and put Pahalgam on the world map of premier river rafting destinations.

At its core, whitewater rafting is simply the act of taking a raft down through turbulent areas of a river. These turbulent areas are known as rapids. Rapids are classified by six categories. Category 1 is a smooth river with no rapids. The categories climb from their too Category 6, which is either impassible or should only be attempted by experts. Most river rafting trips occur on Category 3 and 4 rapids, where the turbulence gives you an exciting ride, but with limited risk. Pahalgam from Chandanwari to Nunwan offers all 6 categories of rapids.

There seem to be three major government agencies involved in the issue. Looks like while Tourism Department would like to encourage the activity, the PDA and Fisheries department hold an opposing view. Or atleast have expressed their cocerns, to make their side of the point. The concerns and issues are genuine, though not insurmountable. Yes, you don’t want to spread garbage, you dont want to effect fauna and fishes, you want to cover the risk via some insurance cover, or at least no-liability paperwork. But at the end of it, this all is doable with proper guidelines and implementation.

Rafting provides a big economic opportunity for locals. One way to handle this is to make co-operatives of local low income people, including ponywallahs, and have them operate the rafting agencies in collaboration with experienced tour operators. This will ensure that tourist’s share of disposable budget doesn’t only go to tour operators from outside. There should only be a handful of agencies allowed, and the bigger thing is that the annual contracts should be openly auctioned off. The generated revenue should be shared amongst PDA, Tourism Department and Fisheries or Forest department to provide for facilities. Forest department can get parking fees for vehicles, Fisheries department can get to sell fishing licences. PDA can get its share to keep the area clean and tourim department can promote the facilities internationally. So on and so on…

From a news coverage in GreaterKashmir dated 5/24/2008, this is how the players/interested parties stack up:

Pahalgam Development Authority
Chief Executive Officer, Pahalgam Development Authority, (PDA), Abdul Rasheed Parray said: “While the pollution caused by the rafting affects the flora and fauna of the region, the garbage damages the shores of the Lidder river as it is not being disposed off properly.”

Fisheries Department
Fisheries Department that has raised objections to the rafting in famous Lidder Nallah here citing “disturbance of fish habitat.”
Joint Director Fisheries, Kashmir, Showkat Ali said, “The rafting boats definitely affect the flora and fauna and disturb the habitat of the fish. The government should wake up to the call and instead select some other rivers for rafting.” According to Ali the rafting agencies are violating the Fisheries Act and are operating the rafting without getting no-objection from the department.

Ponnywallahs and locals
The ponnywallas and the residents here have also objected the rafting. “Pahalgam has its own charm and people don’t visit here for rafting, so tourism department should never have given the permission to the local agencies for rafting,” said Mohu-din a local.

Tourism Department
Director Tourism Farooq Shah, however disagrees that the rafting will create pollution. “If our youth want to earn their livelihood then why this fuss,” Shah said. He said the department’s job was only to register the agencies and the permission is given after due consultation with the PDA.

Rafting Agencies
However, the owners of the rafting firms said the rafting boats don’t create any pollution. “We fail to understand how the rafting boats can affect the fauna and flora of the place and destroy the fish habitat,” they said. They said it speaks volumes about the wisdom of the authorities when they say that the garbage gets dumped into the water. “There is no connection between garbage and the rafting,” they said.

Location
Earlier (2005-2007) the rafting was conducted in Pahalgam itself. But following objections by the CEO, PDA, the spot was changed to Batakote, 2 kilometers away from here. Even as according to the application received by the PDA CEO only six agencies have been given permission by the tourism department for operation of commercial rafting, there are 13 companies presently operating their boats.  Besides, the agencies are operating more boats than permitted.

Ecological impact
Per PDA, though the agencies are strictly responsible for the disposal of the solid waste material and the cleanliness of the area, the tourism department is not taking any action against the violators.
On complaints about improper disposal of waste material, Tourism Department’s Farooq said, “The PDA has been assigned the job of looking after the proper disposal of waste material and it should create facilities to ensure pollution free environment.”

Insurance
Most of the agencies according to the sources in the PDA do not have a necessary insurance cover for the raft guides and clients against risk/accident.
Shah however asked the PDA not to allow any agency to operate boats that doesn’t have proper insurance documents and violate any of the guidelines laid down by the tourism department.

Tarrif
The agencies are also charging more than the tariff fixed by the tourism department.

Amarnath Yatra, Hot issues

Hotel assosiation against construction in Nunwan, Pahalgam

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Long duration of Amarnath Yatra is anyways creating tourism related disruptions in Pahalgam as many casual toursits shy away from the place during those weeks. Now come the sudden step of Amarnath Shrine Board constructing pre-fabricated huts at Nunwan, on the outskirts of Pahalgam. Long term this could start effecting the center of gravity of toursist economy of Pahalgam to outside of Pahalgam, towards Nunwan. While constructing lavatories could make sense if SASB persists with keeping Amarnath yatris out of Pahalgam in a secluded (and perhaps secure) Yatri Camp at Nunwan, the whole idea really needs to be abandoned so that people coming to Amarnath Yatra from all over the country can visit the hill station as normal tourists and enjoy the beauty of it. Of course with it would come the issues of ecological degradation of Pahalgam valley by activities of Yatris, but thats a different problem, and SASB or other wise men can surely arrive at solutions to it. Anyhow, this is a release from KHAROF, typically harsh in wordings, but nevertheless in the right direction. Its from the Gk News network.

Srinagar, May 19: The Kashmir Hotel and Restaurant Owners Federation (KHAROF) on Monday said the construction activities carried out by the Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) at Pahalgam are bound to damage the environment and ecology of the resort besides hurt the public sentiments.
 Acting on the news reports carried by this newspaper about Pahalgam, a KHAROF spokesman said the Federation members unanimously condemned “this anti-environmental, anti-ecological and anti-Pahalgam activities like construction of public lavatories, pre-fabricated huts on concrete plinths at Nunwan” by the SASB.
 “The tourism fraternity of Kashmir appeals to the government not to allow such activities which are bound to wipe out Pahalgam from the tourist map of the world,” a spokesman said in a statement. “And if the government fails to act immediately then the notion that the SASB is by itself a power centre—a state within itself—stand confirmed.”
 The spokesman said the tourism in Kashmir was bread and butter to a large populace, and Pahalgam being a famed tourist destination needs be preserved at any cost. “If such actions are not stopped, it would force us to go to any extent to save the place from human-inflicted injuries like massive constructions,” he said.
 The Federation also demanded that the Yatra period be restricted to 10 days as per the past practice. “Stretching the Yatra to two and a half months is degrading Pahalgam and its neighborhood environmentally and vandalizing it ecologically,” the spokesman added. “We humbly ask the powers that be to get up and save Pahalgam.”
 “It is ironical that few days back the Pahalgam Development Authority declared usage of rubber boats for rafting as an environmental hazard but at the same time it allows vandalism of Pahalgam.”

Bollywood shootings

Making of movie Tahaan, in Pahalgam

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Pre-militancy days, the event list of Pahalgam used to be lined up with which bollywood crew was coming for shooting of which movie, and when. For tourists, getting to see in real the actors and the crew was an added incentive. Well, the spirit seems to be coming back to the valley of shephards. Read about this narrative on shooting of Tahaan in Pahalgam penned by Muzamil Jaleel for the Sunday Express recently:

Last winter, when Bollywood returned to Kashmir, Santosh Sivan turned his famed lens to its “wounded beauty”. In the six weeks he spent with his crew, he found humour, courage and donkeys. We bring you the making of Tahaan, a story of a boy and his beloved pet.

Snowflakes lay scattered on the pine branches. A thick blanket of clouds hid the mountain peaks. It was early winter and in the chill, Pahalgam valley looked grim. On the banks of Lidder stream, a short man with a bushy goatee and sleepy eyes sat alone, watching. He was satisfied with what he saw. The landscape had just the blend of beauty and ache he needed for his story.
The story, which he shot in the Valley last December, is not the usual concoction of violence and politics. Tahaan, a film about an eight-year-old and his donkey, is a fable that only obliquely deals with Kashmir’s conflict. It is slated for an international release soon.

Sivan was one of many filmmakers who came to the Valley last year lured by the thaw in violence. “Kashmir is a treat for your eyes,’’ said the filmmaker known for his magical camerawork. “But I wanted to retain the emotion in the images—this penetrating beauty and the heart-rending gloom.”
Tahaan: A boy with a grenade does not dwell only on the gloom. It is a life-affirming tale of eight-year-old Tahaan, played by Mumbai lad Purav Bhandare, and his journey across the mountains with a grenade—a task he takes up only to reclaim his donkey, Birbal.

Finding Birbal was a story in itself. Sivan wanted two donkeys and that, too, look-alikes. There was a small problem. Kashmir has mules and not donkeys. But Sivan was adamant and even threatened to import donkeys from outside. He had done something similar while shooting Malli (1998) in Mudhumalai (Tamil Nadu), when he got a deer from a hundred miles away for his film based on a wildlife cause.
The task of casting the right donkey fell on Faisal Burza, owner of Hotel Senator Pine and Peak in Pahalgam. A young Kashmiri hotelier, Burza played both host and local logistic guide to Sivan’s crew. His friend, the film’s producer and lifeline of its operations, Mubina Rattonsey, accompanied Burza as he ploughed through the villages surrounding Pahalgam town looking for a donkey. Finally, a villager told Burza about Sirhama, a village high up in the mountains. Donkeys had been spotted there. The crew was ecstatic and Sivan decided to go along with executive producer Kamal Mohammad for the casting coup. “When we told the villagers why we were here, they were delighted. The memories of Bollywood crews in Pahalgam were still alive here,” said Burza. So they lined up their donkeys for what turned out to be a full “audition”. “The problem was not just to choose any donkey. We wanted donkeys that would match Sivan’s imagination. The first few looked a bit arrogant,’’ Kamal said wryly. “Then we saw this calm and composed donkey. He looked a bit melancholic as well. And we knew we had found our star. But we took a few of them along. We wanted to see which one among them would bond with Tahaan.’’
Sivan, Kamal and Burza then began a search for his look-alike. “We were very lucky. We found a donkey, who was not only his double but energetic as well,’’ said Kamal. When the donkeys shuffled on to the lawns of the Pahalgam hotel, the crew was amazed to see Purav bond with the chosen donkeys.

In many ways, Sivan’s film also steers clear of cinematic stereotypes of the Valley. Kashmir’s beauty was not always a metaphor for despair. In the 1960s, films like Junglee (1961), Kashmir Ki Kali (1964), Jaanwar (1965), Jab Jab Phool Khile (1965), Phir Wohi Dil Laya Hoon (1963), and Aarzoo (1965) made it the romance country—tall mountains and Shammi Kapoor, freshwater streams and dimply Sharmila Tagore. After 1989, the year militancy began, it vanished from the movies only to return in the late ’90s as a backdrop for nationalistic films like Mission Kashmir and LOC which provided a skewed Bollywood view of Kashmir and its conflict. Tahaan, however, turns the focus to the individual. It is neither propaganda nor an opinion. “The boy is looking for the purpose of his life. After his father goes missing and his grandfather dies, he is the only ‘man’ at home. His struggle also explains the tragic story of this beautiful land,’’ said Sivan.

The film has a big star cast. For Anupam Kher, it was an emotional homecoming of sorts and Sivan had convinced him that it was safe to come to Kashmir. Rahul Bose, Victor Banerjee and Rahul Khanna, too, had doubts about security but once they were in Pahalgam, their fears were allayed. Several characters were played by local inhabitants. Burza’s sister-in-law Sana Sheikh has a role as do two employees of Hotel Pine and Peak Sajad and Abdul Majeed Shah. CRPF commandant in Pahalgam, Sandeep Gokul, plays the part of a civilian while two television artists from Srinagar are also part of the film.

There were also ordinary people who acted themselves into the script. In one of the film’s sequences, Kher, who plays Kashmiri shepherd Subhan Kakh, gets into a conversation with a few village elders in a barber’s shop. “We requested a few villagers to pose for us. One of them had assisted as a labourer in a Bollywood film in 1970s. But they had never watched a movie,’’ Kamal said. “When Kher sahib delivered his dialogue, the villagers started a conversation, oblivious that a script had to be followed. Kher tried to stop them but they didn’t understand. We continued shooting and it came out very nicely’’.

Not just the local people, the moody landscape and its surprises added to the film. In a scene, Tahaan was to be idling by a pond when another character would throw a stone into the water to attract his attention. “We found the pond completely frozen. We didn’t know what to do but Santosh (Sivan) asked us to carry on. And once the stone fell on the frozen surface of the pond, it made a different sound,’’ Kamal remembered. “Nature was playing magic with our script.’’
There were a few scares for the crew—Kher’s car skidded off a snow-laden stretch in Chandanwari where the road to Amarnath cave ends—but in all, they had a good time and predictably fell in love with the beauty around.

Sivan, though, said he found the grandeur of Kashmir’s landscape predictable. He wanted to look beyond. “When I looked through my camera, it was strange, unsettling. There was no violence while we were shooting but I could feel that strange mist of conflict. Kashmir’s beauty looked wounded,’’ he said. “The most amazing aspect was the people, ordinary people. Little kids would flock around whenever we were shooting. I have never seen so many children. And I saw a lot of hope in their eyes.’’
This film, Sivan emphasised, is a simple human story. “It is about the life of a boy, his family and a Kashmiri village,’’ he said. “It is also a prayer. A prayer that this beautiful land comes out of its tragedy and one day when the Tahaans of Kashmir grow up, they live with dignity, honour and peace.”

KASHMIR CLOSE-UP
The last film shot in Kashmir before militancy began was Elan-e-Jung starring Dharmendra in 1988-89
May 1998: Mere Apnay, starring Amrish Puri, Mukul Dev and Mayuri Kango  and written, directed and produced by Rattan Irani was shot in Gulmarg
March, 1999: Boney Kapoor shot several scenes of his film Pukaar, starring Anil Kapoor and Madhuri Dixit under tight security
April 9, 1999: Ashok Thakeria’s Mann, starring Aamir Khan and Manisha Koirala, had a song and few sequences shot on the snowy slopes of Kongdori in the upper reaches of Gulmarg. The security provided by the J-K government was unprecedented
Nov, 1999: Mani Ratnam shot several song sequences for his Tamil film Allipadi (Breaking The Waves) at the Dachigam National Park
2000: Mission Kashmir by Vidhu Vinod Chopra
2005: Yahaan by director Shoojit  Sircar
2008: Director Raj Kanwar’s film Sadiyaan is based on the return of peace in Kashmir and was recently shot in the Valley especially in the colourful tulip garden. The film has a glittering star-cast of veterans including Rekha, Hema Malini, Rishi Kapoor and newcomer Shatrugun Sinha’s son Luv. Director Rahul Dholakia is currently in Srinagar, working on a Sanjay Dutt-starrer based in Kashmir

Amarnath Yatra

Managing lavatories for Amarnath pilgrims

One of the bigger deals with undertaking any pilgrimage with thousands of other people is to be able be reasonably manage needs arounds bathrooms and  lavatories. If you are in the basecamp at Nunwan in Pahalgam, or camp in Panchtarni or Sheshnag, no other problem is more exacerbated than this. The scene at 6:00 has to be seen to be believed. People sit out there in open, and feces are littered all over – without many reservations, people sit anywhere – simply because there is no choice.  Help is on way…

FAHEEM ASLAM / MUDDASIR ALI of GreaterKashmir  

Pahalgam, May 16: The Shri Amarnath Shrine Board (SASB) has constructed hundreds of lavatories and many huts at Nunwan base camp in this famous hill resort where
illegal constructions already pose a serious threat to its ‘fragile’ environment.

The land on which the lavatories and huts have come up is the state land acquired by the Pahalgam Development Authority (PDA) where construction of
any kind is strictly forbidden.

           “We have constructed 250 lavatories and 22 prefab huts for Yatris. The SASB has asked us to erect 100 more lavatories and 50 bathrooms in the base
camp,” said an SASB employee.

           The huts, and lavatories made of angular iron have been erected on concrete plinths in the green zone with a land area of 226 Kanals.

           Adjacent to the lavatories, small pits have been dug for disposal of human excreta. Many of these pits have been connected to a two feet wide drain
leading to nowhere. The green zone area has another drain which empties into a wide pit, few meters outside the camp. The pit, which has been dug on one side of
the main road leading to Pahalgam, ultimately leads into river Lidder, one of the main attractions of the resort.

           “The drain has been dug last year for flow of residual wastes from Langers which are established every year for yatris. It (drain) will ultimately
carry the wastes to the pit outside for safe decomposition,” said another SASB employee.

           The SASB, according to the employee, has planned to concretize the drain. “The plan was formulated last year, but the board may implement it this
year,” he said. The board is also shifting the prefab huts to other side in the camp due to the high-tension power line passing above them.  Environmentalists and officials in the PDA say environment of Pahalgam is very fragile and any interference with it would be detrimental to its
ecosystem. “Even a minor activity undertaken in this green zone can prove disastrous,” said Dr Mubashir Rufai, a noted environmentalist.

           He said the establishments of lavatories in the zone will affect the environment as well as human health. “The human excreta from these lavatories
will ultimately seep into bottom layers of earth and reach the underground water layer and contaminate it.  It will also pollute the Lidder stream besides
increase the bacterial count of water, which will affect the humans who will consume this water in the lower regions,” Dr Rufai said.

           The PDA authorities, however, claim the excreta would be treated chemically and it will not affect the Nunwan environment. But environmentalists refute the claim. “To what extent can the excreta be treated chemically when you have a massive rush of people?” questioned Dr
Rufai.

           He said the “best solution” would have been to erect environment-friendly lavatories with an attached soakage pit. “The pit could be transported for
proper decomposition at proper locations,” Dr Rufai said.

           The pre-fabricated huts were set up last year by the SASB without seeking permission of the authorities concerned.

           Since then, there has been a strong correspondence between the PDA and SASB about their shifting to some other location. But nothing has been done so
far, even though the construction in this zone is drawing flak from PDA.