Six firemen reached Kurumbachi hills in Kerala last month after they received a distress call. Stuck in a cleft in the hills was 23-year-old amateur trekker Babu. Even for the fire department, there was no way to reach him.
Shaji Mullookaaran, a search and rescue volunteer, along with a team of 14, reached the top the next morning. “Babu was stuck in a place where the rocks had jagged edges and it was very steep. We tried to draw him up using ropes but couldn’t see where he was and it was too windy to hear anything,” he recalls.
Their efforts failed, so did rescue attempts by the National Disaster Management Authority.
It was only two days after Babu’s misadventure that he was rescued by a specialised mountaineering unit of Madras Regimental Centre of the Indian Army.
Way up in the Himalayas, a mother was not so lucky. Her son, scaling a mountain in Uttarakhand, had little or no experience with Alpine-style climbing. His friends — sherpas at that — did have some. But even they couldn’t predict the path of the avalanche this time. His body is yet to be found. The mother has since gone on to accept her son’s fate.
Truth is, his friends didn’t have permits for the climb. They didn’t have much experience on that ridge either. And yet, with no authorities to stop them, they went ahead because, as locals, they assumed they knew best.
There have been other incidents where hikers — one in Nandi Hills near Bengaluru — were trapped on hills with no way out due to their own negligence.
While ignorance and bravado have put many an adventure seeker in a quandary, the very fact that there isn’t a full-time regulatory body to streamline these adrenaline junkies is the real cause for concern.
Picture this: should you be a half-decent swimmer, you could just as well put up a board outside a shack in any beach town in India offering swimming classes. Is that illegal? Of course.
But the police and the coastguards can be paid off, and as long as clients don’t ask you for a registration certificate, you can continue to take classes.
If anyone does crack the whip, you can move on to the next beach and start over. If there is an untoward incident, you move to another state and start over. When you do run out of states to operate in, you return to where you started, and voila, you can begin again. The cycle is endless. This, unfortunately, is how many commercial enterprises operate in the adventure tourism space too.
“There are some who are callous,” says Gaurav, who runs a climbing establishment. "But it’s on the tourism board to check them out regularly and ensure they are not given certification if they don’t have the expertise for the job.”
A level of collusion is expected in a diverse state such as Karnataka where the Department of Tourism has earmarked only Rs 30 crore in the last year to improve tourism as a whole, a significant drop from the Rs 41 crore which was spent in the year 2020-21.
Which means, despite what the Karnataka Tourism Policy for the period of 2020-26 has recommended, adventure tourism can’t be expected to sustain itself, let alone be safe. Even the recommendations of the Karnataka Tourism Vision Group, which was constituted in 2014, can’t be fulfilled.
Both these fairly detailed policies have mandated that in order to organise adventure sports, parties will have to procure permissions from the Adventure Tour Operators Of India (ATOIA), General Thimayya National Academy of Adventure (GETHNAA), Department of Youth Empowerment and Sports, National Institute of Water Sports, Directorate General of Civil Aviation, Indian Mountaineering Federation, and mountain schools recognised by the IMF.
Vetting process
An official in the Department of Tourism noted that over 60% of those running commercial enterprises do not have the certification necessary to organise any sport. He also revealed, on condition of anonymity, that many in the department hand out permits without a proper vetting process.
Should those in possession of these permits follow mandated safety protocols and use the state-of-the-art equipment, the likelihood of mishaps would reduce drastically.
And when those with permits go about treating clients callously, what can you expect from those without one?
Bengaluru-based Rishabh Tripathi is running an online petition to improve safety standards in adventure tourism.
He has found plenty of traction online, but it does little to bring back his son Advik. The young father lost his 12-year-old son to an incident in Bir Billing in Himachal Pradesh a few months ago.
The waiver form, which said the agency will not be responsible for any paragliding mishap, had been signed, but in this case, the agency cannot be absolved. It’s one thing for an accident to happen — everyone participating in adventure sports is aware of the risks involved. But it’s another entirely to ignore responsibility for the clients’ well-being in the wake of an accident.
These providers were apparently registered but were not found in the wake of the ‘freak accident’, least of all held accountable.
“This (apathy) doesn't happen a lot in the surfing circles because it’s a very small community and everyone takes life seriously,” says the owner of a small-time certified surf school in Mangaluru. “Even in the diving schools I have been to, their measures are top-notch.”
Government officials insist that they are doing their best to curtail unregistered tour operators, but often cite stunted finances, dearth of personnel and lack of awareness among the general public as the reason for many of the incidents.
“Awareness among people is essential,” insists Vineet, a climber from Bengaluru. “But what they should really be doing is constituting a full-time search and rescue team. That is the need of the hour.”
Oddly enough, there isn’t a team in place at the moment, and if estimates are to be believed, it would cost approximately a crore or so per year to maintain a search and rescue team of 10, not accounting for equipment. For now, teams, mostly volunteers, are called on as and when there is a crisis, leaving most victims — as in the case of Babu in Malappuram — stranded for days.
Search and rescue
Sanjai Mohan, the head of the Karnataka forest department, had this to say when asked if his department could build a search and rescue team: “We barely have money to keep our forests safe, how will we have money to run a full-time search and rescue team? Also, these incidents happen so infrequently, we can’t keep personnel on stand-by. In the case of the incident in Nandi Hills, we have cordoned off that particular area, and that’s all we can do. People need to understand the risks when they come to places like that.”
He continued: “Instead of going with guides, which the Karnataka Eco-Tourism board offers online, they go by themselves and get into trouble. It’s not like there is only one entry point to the forest so we can’t regulate everyone who enters either. Honestly, why should we create a search and rescue team when our job is to actually save the forest?”
Sure, the tourism department could step in and give birth to a central regulatory agency for the well-being of adventure sports enthusiasts. Sure, these private entities themselves could be more conscientious in their handling of their clients. Sure, the forest department could be more hands-on in establishing a better relationship with those who venture into their territory. Perhaps, ATOIA’s suggestion to have specialised insurance policies would help too.
But try telling that to the mother who grieves the death of her only son, or to the families who lost their sons to a kayaking incident recently or to Rishabh. Or even to those who waited with bated breath as their children were stranded on top of hills they shouldn’t have been on top of.
It’s a game worth playing, but not worth losing.
In the end, though, the buck stops with those willing to sign a physical and metaphorical waiver form. ‘No one but you are responsible’.
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