About

his web site is a new project of the Nanda Devi Campaign, a grassroots effort by the inhabitants of the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve in India to tell their own story in their own words about their epic struggle for cultural and ecological survival in the lap of the High Himalayas. As an initiative that has spanned the globe, community leaders, social activists, western scholars, and well wishers have used internet communication technologies to communicate and coordinate their campaign across vast distances.

The Mountain Shepherds Initiative represents the next phase of that struggle to evolve a new model of tourism in the High Himalayas. Recent moves by the newly created state government of Uttarakhand to open the biosphere reserve to limited ecotourism has prompted the residents of the region to initiate a campaign to safeguard their future. Their struggle has thus moved from protests over access rights to evolving a sustainable, community-owned tourism policy for Nanda Devi, one that takes into account the rights of local people and highlights the rich cultural and natural heritage of the region. As chronicled by in the Nanda Devi Campaign’s principle web site, the communities with the assistance of seasoned activists have prepared and actively promoted their own community-owned ecotourism plan and outreach campaign to develop interest in both the biosphere reserve and their unique trans-Himalayan culture. Mountain Shepherds is an attempt to bring these plans to fruition by throwing open the doors of Nanda Devi to the world.

— On behalf of the teams in Lata, Dehradun, and Toronto