In a recent Time Magazine article covering Uttarakhand as alternative trekking and tourism spot to troubled Tibet and Nepal, Mountain Shepherds was cited as one of the key travel companies. Check it out:

Fresh Heights

By MELISSA BELL
TIME Magazine, May 29, 2008

Tibet and Nepal, the long-standing darlings of the Himalayan tourist trade, have not been the most welcoming countries for visitors over the past few months. Foreign tourists have been barred from Tibet since March’s anti-Chinese protests. Political troubles in Nepal, where recent elections were marred by bombings, have deterred many holidaymakers. Understandably, some travelers are now beginning to look across these borders to the Indian Himalayas, where the state of Uttarakhand — until recently known as Uttaranchal — has quietly been building its own tourist trade. It offers drop-dead gorgeous trekking — the same as you would find in Nepal and Tibet, but in a less restive and less discovered environment than that of its neighbors.

For Hindus, the area has been a travel destination since pre-Vedic times, and pilgrimage trails still crisscross the mountains. The northern district of Garhwal, bordering Tibet, is the largest region and is the most popular with visitors due to its many holy places. One such site, Gangotri, is dedicated to the goddess Ganga, whose temple is located just below the Gaumukh glacier, the source of the sacred river Ganges. Garhwal also boasts two World Heritage sites: the Valley of Flowers, which erupts every spring into a carpet of colorful blooms, and Nanda Devi, the second highest peak in the Indian Himalayas. For environmental reasons, the peak has been off limits to climbers since the early 1980s, but day treks can be made to lower regions of the sanctuary.

The community-owned and -operated Mountain Shepherds tour company, mountainshepherds.prayaga.org, organizes excursions in Garhwal. These trips use locally hired staff and cost around $50 a day, which includes guides, cooks, equipment and transportation. Mountain Shepherds also plans to start longer excursions to local villages in the summer. Two visitors at a time will be able to travel with shepherds herding their flocks in the Himalayan meadows, with village homes available for rent.  [more]

Anusha Subramaniam, reporter for India’s leading business magazine, Business Today, recently trekked with Mountain Shepherds and returned with this report:

Backpacking with hill shepherds

NOVEMBER 5, 2007
Lata Village, Niti Valley

It started off as my much awaited trek in the Garhwal Himalayas and turned into an impressive first-hand account of a small, yet smart, initiative. The setting: Nanda Devi Sanctuary Trek against the backdrop of the spectacular 7,816-metre Nanda Devi peak. [more]

JOSHIMATH, 18 Oct: This past weekend, the last of three international teams departed for Dharansi Pass in the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve as part of the Inaugural Nanda Devi Women’s Trek. Stopping over at eminent journalist Harish Chandola’s guest house near Auli, the group of four women including two Americans, a Canadian, and an Indian, acclimatized themselves to the high altitude before joining the second team at Lata, the traditional gateway village to the Nanda Devi peak.

Marking the thirtieth anniversary of the ill-fated 1976 Indo-American expedition that saw Nanda Devi Unsoeld, the twenty-two-year-old daughter of legendary mountaineer Willi Unsoeld perish on the peak that bore her name, the trek itself made history as the first venture of the wholly community-owned and operated Mountain Shepherds Initiative. Itself an outgrowth of the Nanda Devi Campaign, a five-year-old movement that had arisen out of even earlier environmental justice struggles by the people of the Nanda Devi Biosphere for their forest rights, the initiative hopes to set a model for socially conscious ecotourism in the entire Himalayan region.

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A unique graduation ceremony took place at the Nerhu Institute of Mountaineering on Saturday, where thirty-eight youth hailing mostly from the upper reaches of Chamoli, but also from Uttarkashi and Pithoragarh districts, completed their basic mountaineering course.

Organized by SPECS (Uttarakhand) and sponsored by the Winterline Foundation (USA), composed of alumni of the International Woodstock School in Mussoorie, the boys underwent the 35-day basic training regimen in preparation of the inaugural International Women’s Trek of the Nanda Devi Campaign later in October.
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The Mountain Shepherds Initiative of the Nanda Devi Campaign has announced the long awaited list of finalists for the first ever Nanda Devi Women’s Trek 2006. Seventeen women from India, the US, Canada, and Taiwan were selected for their mountaineering skills and interest in mountain environments and peoples, and have been invited to come to the Nanda Devi region this September and October to take part in the initiative’s inaugural trek.

The Women’s Trek marks a major milestone in the community-based ecotourism efforts of the Nanda Devi Campaign. Five years in the making, the campaign hopes that this trek will launch a new type of tourism based on community aspirations in accordance with the social and environmental principles laid down in the groundbreaking Nanda Devi Declaration of 2001. For this, the campaign reached out to the world’s women mountaineers this past International Women’s Day to pay tribute to the mountain goddess as well as the region’s women who have played a central role in movements such as Chipko and more recent struggles over local forest, land, and water rights.

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