Amid pilgrim rush, U’khand faces littering concerns
MUSSOORIE: The higher reaches of the Himalayas in Uttarakhand are littered with garbage that lakhs of pilgrims throw while on the Char Dham pilgrimage, creating a new ecological danger, experts and activists said.
In just 13 days since the pilgrimage began this year, over 500,000 pilgrims have visited the Char Dham shrines and another over a million are registered to visit. With the summer break expected in plains after mid-May, the rush of tourists and pilgrims is expected to increase. Officials estimate more than a million people would visit the state, including the pilgrims, in the next few months.
During the Char Dham pilgrimage, a person on average generates a minimum 7-9 kg of waste, assuming she takes nine days to complete the journey to all four shrines, according to Anoop Nautiyal, founder of Dehradun-based Social Development Communities Foundation.
“Thousands of tonnes of waste is generated during the Char Dham yatra (pilgrimage) season by pilgrims, in addition to day-to-day waste generated by people living in these areas, and other tourists and travellers going for treks,” Nautiyal said. “There is no system to properly dispose this waste.”
The Char Dham pilgrimage typically begins in May and continues till November. The start and end dates are determined by the Hindu religious almanac. It is one of the most popular pilgrimages in the Himalayas that see a huge influx of pilgrims in the mountain state.
In absence of any mechanism to dispose waste as per Solid Waste Management Rules 2016, Nautiyal said, the waste mostly ends up in the rivers, harming local ecology. In some places where waste is collected, it is often burnt in the open, causing air pollution. “Open waste and littering also worsen the monkey menace, which remains a major issue in the state,” he added.
Environmentalists are appalled at seeing pictures and videos on social media of garbage strewn all over the Yamuna, Bhagirathi and Alaknanda and Mandakini rivers on the Char Dham routes. At Yamnotri and Gangotri, the rivers are full of clothes pilgrims discard after taking a holy bath.
At Uttarkashi, a town on the way to Gangotri, the local municipality dumps waste near the Tambakhani tunnel at the main entry point of the town, most of which is washed into the Bhagirathi river.
“The smell is unbearable as a huge quantity of waste is being dumped near the Tambakhani tunnel on the road adjacent to the Ganga river, and sometimes the workers are involved in burning the waste, which is hazardous to the environment,” said Lokendra Bisht, a social activist in Uttarkashi.