Going off track to find the right path for Himalayan tourism

Vandana Vijay’s Off­beat Tracks launched in 2016 to spread the concept of exper­i­en­tial travel and sus­tain­able com­munity-based eco­tour­ism in India, espe­cially among rur­al com­munit­ies in the Him­alay­as. In this “Good Tour­ism” Insight, Ms Vijay offers examples of how she trans­lates her travel & tour­ism philo­sophy into action.

UPDATE, June 2021: Promp­ted by “GT”, Ms Vijay offered the fol­low­ing update to her Octo­ber 2017 “GT” Insight: 

The years 2020 – 21 are water­shed years in the his­tory of the world and have caused rad­ic­al changes in the ways people work. For many jobs and pro­fes­sions, gone are the days when one is required to com­mute, clock in, and sit for hours at an office desk. In the digit­al age, all they need is an act­ive inter­net con­nec­tion, a laptop or a mobile phone, and they are set to make any place their work­place. This has cre­ated a new product in the exper­i­en­tial travel space: The ‘work­a­tion’.

As the name sug­gests, work­a­tions com­bine long vaca­tions with con­tin­ued work. The remote rur­al homestays we work with in the Him­alay­as, such as this one, turn out to be good options for this new emer­ging mar­ket. The homestays provide a source of income for their com­munit­ies too, because they are truly loc­al in their oper­a­tion and exe­cu­tion. Indeed because homestay-based work­a­tions facil­it­ate vis­it­ors’ immer­sion in loc­al cul­ture, they would be a fourth item on my list of ways to pro­mote exper­i­en­tial travel in India and the Him­alay­as were I to write this “GT” Insight today.

With that update noted, Ms Vijay is happy for her “GT” Insight to be giv­en a fresh round of social media promotion.

Since our launch in 2016 we have worked inch by inch toward real­ising our vis­ion of pro­mot­ing exper­i­en­tial travel across India with a focus on skills and infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment via eco­tour­ism. We have devised three main ways to accom­plish this:

1. Cus­tom-made exper­i­en­tial vaca­tions with a spe­cial focus on eco­tour­ism and communities;
2. Work­ing with aca­dem­ic insti­tu­tions across the coun­try to sens­it­ise stu­dents about rur­al eco­tour­ism and the busi­ness poten­tial; and
3. Using the concept of volun­teer-based com­munity ini­ti­at­ives and eco­tour­ism to build out infra­struc­ture in rur­al communities.

I will give examples of each of the above-men­tioned mod­els that we are work­ing on at Off­beat Tracks.

Experiential holidays focussed on ecotourism and communities

This mode of travel is some­thing new in the Indi­an mar­ket but is def­in­itely a grow­ing niche. There are an increas­ing num­ber of trav­el­lers, ran­ging from mil­len­ni­als to older gen­er­a­tions, who are look­ing at gain­ing some­thing more from their vacations.

Keep­ing this grow­ing interest in mind, we cus­tom­ise and cur­ate spe­cial vaca­tions for our dis­cre­tion­ary trav­el­lers. These vaca­tions have a heavy focus on exper­i­ences and loc­al inter­ac­tions. We cre­ate itin­er­ar­ies wherein guests get to sample the loc­al cul­ture and tra­di­tions of a region, thereby hav­ing a cul­tur­ally immers­ive exper­i­ence. Our exper­i­ences range from med­it­a­tion ses­sions with monks at mon­as­ter­ies, short treks, bird­ing activ­it­ies, hands-on shawl and bas­ket weav­ing les­sons, to culin­ary tours.

Guests also stay at homestays run by loc­al host fam­il­ies to increase the immers­ive exper­i­ence. To ensure they know what to expect, we tell them about the bene­fits of a homestay over a tra­di­tion­al hotel. We also edu­cate them on the basic cour­tes­ies that they must main­tain while stay­ing at someone’s home, par­tic­u­larly any loc­al cus­toms that they should be cog­niz­ant of. Per­haps this is why we have yet to encounter any con­flicts between guests and hosts.

The loc­al com­munit­ies bene­fit from this mode of travel in the fol­low­ing ways:

• By hav­ing guests stay at loc­al homestays we encour­age the tour­ism-based eco­nomy in the region;
• We use loc­al trans­port vendors and guides to show our guests around thereby provid­ing loc­al ser­vice pro­viders with an addi­tion­al source of income;
• Exper­i­ences are provided by loc­al artis­ans and farm­ers who get an addi­tion­al boost to their live­li­hood by allow­ing people glimpses into their daily lives; and
• There is a huge impact on the psyche of loc­al hosts and vil­la­gers as they devel­op a new-found sense of pride in show­cas­ing their cul­ture and way of life to the out­side world!

We work with com­munit­ies in dif­fer­ent regions ran­ging from Ladakh in the North­ern Him­alay­as, Sikkim and Bhutan in the East­ern Him­alay­as, and Assam, Naga­land and Meghalaya in the far east­ern states of India. Each one of these com­munit­ies has a unique cul­ture and her­it­age wait­ing to be exper­i­enced by our travellers.

When intro­du­cing ourselves to a com­munity, our approach var­ies from region to region depend­ing on the con­di­tions there. In some regions we work with NGOs that are already pro­mot­ing eco­tour­ism in vil­lages. In oth­er regions we identi­fy vil­lages with dynam­ic lead­ers. We train them on skill devel­op­ment and encour­age them to cre­ate a group of loc­al lead­ers who will have all the neces­sary skills to devel­op and pro­mote their vil­lage as an eco­tour­ism des­tin­a­tion. For example, when we iden­ti­fied a vil­lage in Naga­land called Kig­wema as a suit­able des­tin­a­tion for exper­i­en­tial travel, we worked with a loc­al homestay own­er from the vil­lage who went on to engage a com­munity of indi­vidu­als with dif­fer­ent skills (farm­ers, weavers, et cet­era). They got togeth­er to form an action group that would facil­it­ate tour­ism exper­i­ences in their village.

Working with academic institutions

Many edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions in India today are offer­ing spe­cial cred­its pro­grammes with a focus on rur­al infra­struc­ture and skills devel­op­ment. With this in mind we are intro­du­cing a new pro­ject to cur­ate rur­al immer­sion and skills devel­op­ment pro­grammes for stu­dents. The primary focus of these pro­grammes will be to equip stu­dents with know­ledge and skills in areas such as lead­er­ship, devel­op­ment, under­stand­ing rur­al mar­kets, infra­struc­ture, and com­munity impact. Rather than only classroom ses­sions, we will ask stu­dents to devise plans that would bene­fit a rur­al com­munity. Their plans might include waste man­age­ment sys­tems, sol­ar power grids, med­ic­al camps, and much more. This pro­ject will roll out next year.

Building infrastructure in rural communities

We like to col­lab­or­ate with infra­struc­ture ser­vice pro­viders espe­cially in the field of sol­ar power to elec­tri­fy moun­tain com­munit­ies that are off the grid.

We recently under­took a sol­ar power pro­ject for a vil­lage in Ladakh. From July 14 – 21, 2017, Off­beat Tracks along with a group of 14 volun­teers from Cali­for­nia, worked on a rur­al sol­ar elec­tri­fic­a­tion pro­ject in vil­lage of Tak­machik in the Sham region of Ladakh, a three-hour drive from the cap­it­al city of Leh.

Our primary object­ive was to power 10 houses that were totally off the grid due to their loc­a­tion. These homes were a three-hour trek uphill on two ridges in the moun­tains. Each home was a 10-minute trek from the oth­er. The sol­ar units were cre­ated by middle school chil­dren in USA and craf­ted spe­cially with the vil­lage and its loc­a­tion in mind.

The primary chal­lenge was logist­ic­al. At the last minute our sol­ar bat­ter­ies wer­en’t allowed to be flown into Leh so we had to trans­port them by road into Ladakh which took sev­en days. Our sol­ar equip­ment and tools weighed over 170 kg and we had to carry them into the moun­tains to the houses that needed to be powered. Loc­al help and the sup­port of a don­key was of great value here. Trekking in the arid land­scape and high alti­tude of approx­im­ately 10,500 ft was a chal­lenge for the group as well.

In addi­tion to provid­ing homes with lights, we also pro­moted the poten­tial for eco­tour­ism to help vil­la­gers with an addi­tion­al source of income. Indeed dur­ing our five-day vis­it to the vil­lage, total earn­ings by the com­munity amoun­ted to INR 1,00,000/- (~USD 1,540) which would have giv­en a great boost to the loc­als and their vil­lage eco­nomy. For our part, we learnt about their meth­ods of organ­ic farm­ing and oth­er aspects of their lives.

With the help of these three approaches we plan to engage rur­al com­munit­ies and have every­one reap the bene­fits of exper­i­ence-based eco­tour­ism with­in India and the world.

About the author

Vandana Vijay is CEO and Founder of Off­beat Tracks.

An Army Officer’s daugh­ter, I had the priv­ilege of grow­ing up all over India. These var­ied exper­i­ences gave me a respect for the diversity in my coun­try. With a Mas­ters in Micro­bi­o­logy, I went on to work with Face­book for three years in their Busi­ness Integ­rity Team. It was dur­ing one of my volun­teer­ing stints in 2014 at Ladakh that I real­ised that I truly loved work­ing with rur­al com­munit­ies at the grass­roots level. It was then that I decided to start on a ven­ture of my own that com­bined travel with a pos­it­ive impact on rur­al lives. This was how Off­beat Tracks came to be.

Vandana has also writ­ten for The “GT” Travel Blog.