The Calamity and the Response

Though every journey that takes you away from your routine is a unique experience, some travel destinations stand apart. They offer different experience each time you visit them. There are lot of these on offer in India. One of them is Ladakh.

It’s at the North-West end of India, placed amongst Shivalik, Pir Panjaal, Karakoram and other Mid and Great Himalayan ranges. Ladakh is one of the three regions of State of Jammu and Kashmir, the other two obviously being Jammu and Kashmir Valley. These three regions are apart from each other as much as day and night. People, religion, language, flora, fauna, weather, landscape, in each respect they are miles apart from each other. Rest of India knows much more about Jammu and Kashmir as these two regions have much more political influence on Indian psyche and the media.

But Ladakh has its own beauty. A barren landscape at great hight about 12000ft above sea leval. I have been a great admirer of hills and thick lush greenery the mountains offer. So visiting Ladakh was never on my wish list until few of friends insisted on organizing a tour in Ladakh.

As usual I started gathering information about Ladakh and its tourist attractions from the start of New Year itself that 2010. By the end of May my travel plan was in place to coincide with Ladakh festival on 1^st September. We were in all 16 travel enthusiast. I started making everyone aware about the difficult terrain and weather conditions one might encounter in Ladakh.

Come August and all the group members started counting down the days to 24^th August, the date of our departure from Mumbai. And a tragedy struck in Leh in the form of Cloud burst and flash floods on 4,5 August. The airwaves became full of tragic footage of broken houses, roads, dead bodies, stranded tourists and all that a flash flood of this magnitude can bring. We were all stunned and I almost felt that whatever efforts I have taken to meticulously plan for this tour are Kaput. But few of my group members and also my tour operator Chandan Sharma told me to hold my guns as there are still 20 days from our journey. In coming week more and more bad news kept coming. The whole of north India was experiencing heavy rain fall and even China and Pakistan had flood situation.

As per our scheduled plan we were supposed to go to Manali from Chandigarh and start our journey to Leh on 26^th August. As a result of heavy rains this year Rohtang Pass, 51kms away from Manali was getting closed due to landslides and bad roads.

In short, no good news was coming from North. Situation in Leh itself was shown on TV was of total devastation, collapse, epidemic and death, injured locals. I was slowly making myself ready for calling it quits and canceling the tour. But one of my friend send me a email asking me not to be stopped by the situation, and in fact should grab the opportunity to help the poor and needy and victims of the tragedy. This hit me and I thought that canceling the tour was the easiest of options available to me. I said to myself that I should be brave and analyse other options as well.

So, in trying to build consensus in my group, I wrote an email to the members and urged them not cancel the tour and in fact include a different motive of social work in our otherwise Fun and Leisure trip. To this most of my group members agreed but few thought that they would become a liability on the group, and dropped out.

Now we remained a group of 11 members. The average age of my group was 49 and the group was incapable of doing any physical activity in Leh. So I decided that we should carry supplies and distribute them to the victims. I declared 1000 blankets be pledged for the cause. Obviously, our own contribution would not have been sufficient. So I started collecting funds from friends, relatives, and colleagues. All the other group members also geared up their efforts for the same in their respective circles.

The initial response we got was adverse. Friends and relatives tried to stop us from going to Ladakh and putting our lives in danger. Some called us mad, irresponsible. Some were certain that we will have to return back from Manali. But we all showed our resolve to go ahead with the tour and slowly people around us started getting connected with the Operation Leh and we could raise a decent fund of about Rs.1.4 lacs in a short span of 15 days.

Funds collection was a relatively easy task as many came forward with donations, as we promised it wouldn’t be handed over to any middleman. My main concern was to carry 1000 blankets from Mumbai. Meanwhile, I establish contact with Brigadier Satyesh Bhaduri and a social worker Mr. Sanjay, working with ‘Ladakh Apada Sahayatta Kosh’ in Leh. I heard from Brigadier that Army office in Navy Nagar might be of some help in airlifting the supplies from Mumbai till at least Chandigarh. But I was unsuccessful in generating a positive reply from Mumbai office of Army. Mr. Sanjay categorically told us to avoid carrying anything before we review the ground realities in Leh. As per his advise we dropped the idea of carrying any supplies with us and save almost 15-20 thousand on transportation.