Hello,

When most people think of the Chardham yatra, they perhaps think of temples nestled among lofty, snow-kissed mountains.

But for those who live in the region, the yatra now also evokes anxieties of the mountains’ destruction, and of landslides that have battered villages along the route in recent years. Their fears have been particularly acute since 2016, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a project to widen around 890 km of existing roads on the route to 12-metre double-laned highways.

The project barrelled on despite the fact that an expert committee warned that such intensive construction work, which also involved cutting mountain slopes, would increase the risks of landslides in the region. Travelling along the route in October, Vaishnavi Rathore and Kritika Pant geo-tagged landslide-hit areas that they came across. In one stretch of 300 km, between Rishikesh and Badrinath, they counted 164 such sites.

“Standing near these landslides it was clear how dangerous these roads can be,” said Vaishnavi. “Tourists like us come and go after visiting these sites, and the danger is limited to that trip. But when we met locals, I realised that they were living with these landslides and their threats everyday.”

You can read the story here.

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Ajay Krishnan
Senior Editor

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On the road to Chardham, a landslide every two kilometres

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