Sonam Wangchuk: Chief Guest's Speech at the Indian Responsible Tourism Summit & Awards 2018.
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00:00 "If the valley is reached by high passes,
00:05 only the best of friends and worst of enemies are its visitors."
00:11 That's a proverb in Ladakh and Tibet.
00:15 I think our ancestors referred to invaders and explorers in this proverb,
00:26 but it holds as much true today with tourism.
00:31 And I come from one such valley that is approached by high passes, Ladakh,
00:39 and I've seen the growth of tourism from best of friends coming
00:45 to what seems more like worst of enemies today.
00:50 And I've been also struggling, working to see how it could again be changed
00:58 to best of friends.
01:00 In 1974, when the government of India opened Ladakh for tourism,
01:07 I was a little boy in a remote village with only five families.
01:14 And this family of mine was almost forced to open up our house
01:22 to become what would today be called a homestay,
01:27 because it was on the way between two very famous sites in Ladakh,
01:38 Alchi and Lamayuru.
01:41 So, visitors from mainly Europe in those days,
01:48 when Ladakh was actually accessed by high passes,
01:53 and only the really interested, well-studied, adventurous as it was
02:02 in those days to venture into Ladakh, would come.
02:07 And many of them would come begging my mother for a place to sleep,
02:15 and she would, out of Ladakhi hospitality, receive them, feed them.
02:21 And the next morning, I would often see almost a fight going on
02:28 about paying and not accepting money.
02:32 And I would often see that the guests would leave when she would refuse to take money,
02:38 that they have left their money under the pillows, under the plates, and so on.
02:45 That was another kind of tourism that I saw.
02:51 And as a little boy, I used to have a great time making lots of friends
02:58 from different countries and taking them around to the mountains,
03:04 to the monasteries, showing them the river and so on.
03:09 And I didn't go to a school till nine years of age,
03:16 because my little village with five households didn't have a school,
03:21 and that's not a bad thing.
03:24 I learned later it was the best time of my childhood.
03:28 And these tourists were visitors or explorers who became my friends,
03:34 and that's how I learned a lot of things, including English in a tiny village,
03:40 and later French and German and many other languages.
03:45 So as a little child, they were a great part of my growth,
03:51 learning about the world and the languages.
03:55 The problem in Ladakh is that we are completely dependent on glaciers for our water,
04:01 for our farming.
04:03 And with the warming up, these glaciers are smaller and smaller,
04:09 and in springtime, when all plants wake up asking for water,
04:14 there isn't enough water, partly because the glaciers are becoming smaller,
04:18 partly because where the glaciers are at heights,
04:22 it's still too cold for it to melt and reach the village where they need water.
04:28 So there is a great shortage of water in springtime,
04:33 conflicts around water.
04:35 But then in summer, there's actually excess of water,
04:38 even floods as the glaciers melt and melt fast,
04:42 and this flow continues into autumn and even winter with a lag.
04:49 Now, in winter, nobody farms,
04:51 so the water just flows into the Indus River and the Arabian Sea.
04:55 So we said, "How about freezing it in winter
05:00 and keeping it in a way that it lasts till the next summer?"
05:07 This, of course, was considered laughable by many
05:11 to do it at village altitudes, because it would melt prematurely.
05:16 All ice on ground is gone.
05:18 How can you keep ice till May and June?
05:22 And we wanted to do it at village altitudes
05:25 so that people could easily do it.
05:27 There were other experiments before us,
05:29 but they had to be built high up near the glaciers,
05:33 which was so high up that people wouldn't bother to maintain.
05:37 So we used high school science to make ice last.
05:44 To cut it short, I just say that in geometry,
05:48 we learn about shapes that have minimal surface area for the volume,
05:52 for example, spheres, hemispheres, cones.
05:56 So we at this school said,
05:59 "You can either cover the glacier ice with the shade
06:04 so it lasts longer into the spring,
06:07 but that wouldn't be practical,
06:09 because how much of covering can you afford
06:12 for a huge chunk of ice or a mountain of ice?"
06:16 So can we reduce the surface area and increase the volume?
06:21 Because the sun needs surface area, doesn't care about volume.
06:26 Farmers need volume, don't care about surface area.
06:30 So can we somehow make a cone of ice that goes vertically up
06:37 and a cone like a hemisphere has minimal surface area for the volume
06:42 so that sun cannot melt it,
06:44 because it doesn't get the surface area.
06:46 So we did a prototype four years ago
06:50 and betted on how long it will last.
06:54 The wildest was till April, but then it went till July.
06:58 The ice lasted till July and slowly melted to give its water to trees.
07:04 So the hypothesis, the magic of high school science worked to solve this problem.
07:09 When Ladakh was open to tourism,
07:12 it had only approach access by road,
07:16 and therefore it was so hard.
07:18 So only the very, very dedicated and committed ones would come.
07:23 But now we have like 13 or 14 flights a day in summer.
07:29 So suddenly those passes are gone and it's open for mass tourism.
07:34 And that is killing Leh, the city, which is where it is concentrated.
07:40 Unfortunately, this tourism rose from 2000 when it started, roughly,
07:46 to 20,000 for until around 2004 or so.
07:52 It used to be almost steady at 20,000.
07:56 Then in the next few years, till by 2010 or so,
08:00 it went to 200,000 suddenly.
08:04 And 200,000 concentrated on a 5-square-kilometer township of Leh.
08:11 So you can imagine 200,000 on a town of 5 square kilometers
08:16 with 20,000 people and in 5 summer months.
08:21 Such a concentrated dose that it's killing the city itself.
08:26 So what through this we are trying to do
08:29 is to make them best of friends again
08:32 from this concentrated dose of tourists,
08:36 which people in Leh have had enough of them.
08:39 They are not interested in any cultural exchange or about their lives or so on.
08:44 It's just a hotel to sleep and get done with that.
08:48 So what we are now trying to do is expand it outside Leh
08:53 and outside of the 5 summer months.
08:56 So if you expand it to all parts of Ladakh
09:01 and open many, many, many villages with their farmhouses,
09:06 with the mothers or amalas,
09:09 trained to receive visitors in very professional ways,
09:14 both get amazing experience.
09:17 Then the carrying capacity suddenly increases.
09:21 What is like the limit or beyond for a 5-square-kilometer township?
09:27 Suddenly when you expand it to the 45,000 square kilometers that Ladakh is
09:33 and 300,000 people,
09:36 I did a back of the envelope calculation
09:39 and it turns out that we can actually absorb 500,000 more
09:45 and still be very meaningful in different villages
09:49 where people are interested in each other.
09:52 They get to see authentic life in villages and so on.
09:56 So by expanding it outside of Leh into villages like Pyang and beyond,
10:02 it can once again become interesting for both sides.