ACTING AGAINST NATURE

Delhi burns in the month June so to get solace out of it we all 12th classmates decided to take refuge in lower himalyan regions for few days. The destination was finalized as Dharamshala (it was my decision though) a small hill station in HP at an altitude of 1500mtrs above sea level.
The journey begin on unhappy note with traffic jam at delhi border and chaotic temperature in the morning and the uncomfortable bus made the matter worse, but still the excitement of reaching dharamshala kept our tempo going. We received a major setback when we saw that dharamshala was 50km and at that moment we were sweating like anything. Suddenly all the coverage on Global warming and all those issues raised by professors and various sci-fi movies started flashing in front of my eyes. News of kullu which is another hill station at slightly higher altitude , being under the spell of heat waves was even more shocking. So the trip which was supposed to be a leisure activity turned out to be an eye opener for me. Another thing which i had noticed was the construction that was done on the mountain and most of them seemed to be quiet recent one. People have been converting these beautiful and once frequent snow bearing mountains into a cradle of holiday resorts and motels. Who should be blamed for it, are they local people who have build the resort or the travellers whose increasing inflow have made resorts a necessity or is it the tourism department whose aggressive campaign has attracted more tourists but this was done to raise revenues which can feed the local people. So the cause ends in a cycle which simply means that solution is hard to discover or hard to achieve untill and unless one uses iron fist. We kept moving upwards till Rohtang pass where we could finally see natural ice, something which was abundant in many parts of himachal ,few years back but now is found only in very high altitudes. I enjoyed my day there but later on one thing that poked me was that did i unknowingly contribute in ruining the environment. Was i amongst last few people who will say that we saw ice at rohtang pass. By appreciating the beauty of that place will i start the chain which tourism department did. But these thought dont last long because we always measure the events in the scope of our lifetimes and sometime in even smaller span of time. If something doesn't bound to affect me in my lifetime or say worse in another ten years than why to bother about it. This is the prime reason for all the threats that the earth is facing at this moment. And no one can run away from his/her role in it. We need to learn from Swiss people who are ready to change their lifestyles just to maintain their environment, while we are ready to destroy everything to enhance our comfort. I dont know when i will visit rohtang , i will see snow there or not but i certainly will do everything to save mother earth. The action may be as subtle as keeping lights, fans and taps closed when not in use.