Update on Uttarakhand, India & The Economist on the hazards of religious travel

I’ve been looking for updates on Uttarakhand in northern India, after the floods that claimed so many lives (11,000 missing, according to United Nations estimates, though that number may be revised).  The debate over urban growth and the pressures that religious tourism has put on the area continues — see this interview with a climate change expert arguing for afforestation and building codes in Himalayan states.  The need for disaster preparedness at major pilgrimage sites is another ongoing discussion.

Manikarnika on the River Bhagirathi. Credit: Sandeep Saxena

The dangers from flooding have not passed: there is still the struggle to distribute aid to those affected as roads and other infrastructure have been washed out or damaged by landslides.  Heavy rains are causing flash floods, with injuries and fatalities.  And, on August 2, the Manikarnika Shiva temple on the banks of the Bhagirathi river was swept away by flood waters.  This happened during the Hindu month of Shravan, when devotees visit the temple.

The Economist recently had an article titled “The hazards of religious travel: The final pilgrimage.”  This article calls attention to the impact of movements of people for religious reasons, and the need for more ecologically sustainable forms of tourism.  From the piece:

Only a few weeks ago, thousands of people, many of them tourists or Hindu pilgrims, are thought to have lost their lives in floods which afflicted the north Indian state of Uttarakhand and led to one of the largest-ever air rescue operations.

Across the world, at least 200m people go on pilgrimage every year, according to the Alliance of Religions and Conservation, a British-based organisation which is currently holding a meeting in Norway to consolidate the work of the Green Pilgrimage Network. That is an association of pilgrim cities and sacred sites which want to make religious travel more friendly to the environment. At the current session, Santiago de Compostela is one of 15 locations (along with Iona and Canterbury in Britain and the Indian city of Varanasi, formerly Benares), which are in the process of signing up to the project. The founding members included India’s Amritsar, Italy’s Assisi and Jerusalem. Participants in the Norwegian meeting lit candles in memory of the people who died in Spain and Uttarakhand.

Has the advent of affordable high-speed transport made pilgrimage an even more hazardous business (for both the travellers themselves, and others) than ever? Perhaps certain dangers are growing more acute, such as the risk of epidemics spreading not only among pilgrims but in their home countries when they return. The annual Muslim pilgrimage or haj to Mecca attracts up to 3m people. In recent years there have been outbreaks of meningitis among the pilgrims, and last year there was a surge of worry after a Saudi national died from the shadowy coronavirus which can cause deadly pneumonia. That is not a new problem; in 1865 there was a cholera epidemic in Mecca which spread to other countries. But air travel obviously increases the danger of a global pandemic. Last year the Saudi authorities felt obliged to offer an assurance that all necessary preventive measures were being taken.

This is a long quote, but a good one — and the issues of safety and sustainability will only become more important as religious tourism is made more popular and accessible through technology and communications.