To take a raw piece of wilderness, at a point in time, when it was practically a solitary beacon, along with a small handful of pioneers, and sculpt it in the gentlest possible manner, into a place where eco tourism could thrive, is not a task for the faint of heart. Coming from old military lineage, along with missionary school education and not being “business minded “ in the normal sense of the word, I excelled academically at little except geography and history, trigonometry and English essay writing . My “business sense” was limited to “delivering what you promised, and delivering top quality, in conditions that defied normal functioning”, for this is what I had learnt from my parents and teachers.
In 1988, a decade after having entered the adventure travel business as a trek leader, yurt camp builder and fishing camp manager in Kashmir, I came to the Upper Ganges Valley to scout for opportunities in my field. This led to my becoming the fourth white water rafting operator on the Ganga and capturing a third of the market share by the end of the second season.
How this came about was this: I had created the country’s first adventure travel film (slide) presentation which the late SP Dutt of Air India, a brilliant man in his own right, took a shine to and who endorsed it, for screening at AIR INDIA offices abroad, along with the Ministry of Tourism. While screening in Montreal, I chatted up Chris Phelan, owner of New World River Expeditions aka Nouveau Monde Rivier Expeditions and told him , “ your rafting season ends in September, ours begins early October on the Upper Ganges, so send your equipment and guides to us and they will both earn a warm weather holiday”. AIR INDIA flew in paying travelers and river guides from Canada, as well as rafts, gear and even spare tyres for our Chevy Van, and so I was able to cut short the gestation time of a new operation, to zero. Unlike the other couple of outfits who hired university educated lads, I chose to hire local village youth from the mountains of Garhwal and Himachal, as I believed they were the better human materiel. I then used a training method from the British Indian army, which was to have written the entire safety briefing comprehensively in Hindi, with the phoenetics in English.
We facilitated the American Embassy School, US Embassy and many a European Embassy, and also trained a variety of regiments from the Indian Army, as well as the INS Ganga of the Indian Navy’s Western Fleet, CRPF Women’s team, and handled mountaineering expeditions for the British Army (ski mountaineering), Royal Air Force (to Mt Kedar Dome) , and by teaming up with an ex SAS type Tom Bufton, began the very first outdoor management and team building programs which we ran for VP and Sr Executive level, American Express, HSBC, ABN Amro, Philip Morris and others.
The establishing of the white water rafting industry was trying. The government had no norms and I had to lead the likes of Ajeet Bajaj, Yusuf Zaheer, the late Col Bull Kumar’s son Akshay Kumar and Shaukat Sikand, into forming a rafting Association, as the existing Association founded by Avinash Kohli refused to admit us as he was dead against newbies coming onto the scene, some of whom like Bajaj and Zaheer had worked from him, the man who brought the very first rafting expedition to India. It later transpired that the administration of the time represented by a District Magistrate whose name I remember well: “Aggarwal”, was acting on Kohli’s behest to torment us by forcing us to remove our camps, there being no precedent at the time for catering to our industry. In between the duo of Kohli and Aggarwal orchestrated the electricity department workers to represent villagers and raise slogans and protests against rafting. This was still UP State and I got word that after forcing Yusuf Zaheer of Himalayan River Runners to evict, he chose to cross the river to the opposite bank and camp as that was a different district, Pauri, as against Tehri! I was told “the UP Armed Police is coming tomorrow to your camp”. I therefore met the compounder of the village and asked him for permission to camp on his fields and he gladly let me do so. I waited until the posse came. The head said “sahib, I request you to move camp”.
I therefore did so. We had the diplomats of the Australian High Commission on those two days. Being typical fun loving Aussies, when they came back, they did not even bat an eyelid when they found their camp had moved! The next day infact was the night of the big Uttarkashi earthquake. Again, being Aussie after the beer and BBQ they were the only ones who slept through it all!
I soon vacated the compounder’s fields and shifted my tents to the roof of the local telephone exchange at Kudiyalla and operated for two seasons there. This time the Tehsildar told the MLA leading the protests that he couldn’t do anything as I was on private land.
That was when I decided to buy land so far down the mountain that no official would want to come down to visit! This was to be the land I purchased in 1995 at Singtali.
We were young and strong. We thought nothing of lugging rafts and gear up and down the track, which actually was by way of where the current Taj Rishikesh stands and which was forcibly snatched from us by the current owners of the property, Arjun Mehra’s father Ramesh Mehra and Mohan Kohli, who chose to throw out my gate and block me off. I was overseas and unable to react , and upon returning, found I could not enter my own land, and was then forced to build a new road for which I had to obtain separate permission from the State.
Having then come by this land, I operated the aforementioned expeditions from here and then stopped the rafting operations when I went to Canada. I began using the style Spashram RiverMountain Retreat, where earlier the site was known only as TigerPaw Camp, famous for having trained so many local guides many of whom are in their forties today, such as Arjun Routella in Shivpuri. Arjun was a forester and helped draw up my first species lists of existing trees, after which I began plantation over the next quarter century. With no electricity, the blazing hot summers meant carrying jerry cans by man pack up the mountain to water the plants we were bringing in. The late Rita Ramchandani a renowned landscape designer of Dehra Dun was talked into by my father’s coursemate the late Lt Gen RK Jasbir Singh who after retiring as Commandant of the Indian Military Academy, had settled in Dehra Dun. She was elderly, and fumed at Jasbir for duping her into coming to the steep location! Anyway she plotted a fine array of plants designed to flower at different times of the year and be visible from different points. Thereafter we began random intense plantation of numerous species, and even got the Sub Divisional Magistrate’s permission to plant on adjoining land which no one else could access, for improving the ambience.
The building of the Taj Rishikesh whose style of construction was the dead opposite of our very low slung and modest, eco friendly approach was devastating to say the least. When I first came to my land and camped on the beach, I saw leopard pug marks. We sighted leopard regularly crossing the road and indeed on my path. Barking deer, and wild boar infact still visit. However the absolute anhelation of the eco system by the construction style of the Taj Rishikesh which brought huge excavators etc. and dug up the land which impacted all the fox, rabbit, and other game, to give way to a “luxury hotel” founded on the rapine of a huge ecosystem. Infact I told Arjun Mehra that he should really build around all the existing foliage and verdure including the trees that his father himself had planted since the same time (1996) . However, state law warranted that projects be built on commercial land on which “nothing grows”, and the land use was changed . Surreptiously overnight, they hired the village contractor Sudama Singh Rawat and felled all the existing growth leaving a shadow of what had grown from 1996 onwards. My model on the other hand, only converted that land on which actually nothing grew and left the rest as agricultural, as for me, eco tourism meant maintaining the agro profile. Where they should have tied up with the Taj jungle lodges brand, in order to leverage existing small mammalian and avian species in their habitat, but ego in trying to set up a competing brand to Ananda in the Himalaya, led them to this skewed decision. Now the manager Dev Raj Singh attempts to show a few bird species but this is neither here nor there. The season for the Upper Ganges is extremely short as after march it is terribly warm and after the rains come in July, terribly wet and humid. Also, there are no world class outdoor activities and the ski lifts, ski lodges and the white water are all rather low budget. This couple with the post corona period of central air-conditioning or closed dining, and the high rise against nature style, completely misplaced. The diesel generators causing air pollution, banned in other places, continues to spew as the power outages are many . The night lights cause night pollution with night theft and harm insect life which is critical for a healthy ecosystem as birds for example feed on them. That a group like the Tata’s Taj Group, particularly after the NGT passed strictures even though the hotel owner was finally given permission, but after ensuring they adhere to key aspects , and very obviously did not conduct due diligence is shocking. The example that they have set for local hoteliers and their building style also goes against the grain, particularly at the time when the earth is facing severe threats from climate change.
The very hard fought ground and biosphere we were able to create on our site, is understandably precious to us and its and the surroundings abuse with impunity is something I now cannot forgive.
En route justice
On the 20th of November of 2021 the CJM of Narendra Nagar Distt Tehri passed an order calling for a thorough investigation by the Police and directing the SHO of the Muni ki Reti Police Station to depute an inspector level officer to investigate multiple areas of wrong doing by the management of the Taj Rishikesh and the property owner Arjun Mehra, a foreign national. The complainant Mr IJ Singh one of the pioneers of the adventure industry in India and also of the white water rafting industry on the Ganga, who has operated in the State since 1988 bringing important visitors such as foreign embassies, domestic and foreign schools and teams from the Indian army, navy and Central Reserve Police training for which he conducted with his late father Major General Surjit Singh, has been developing a unique bio sphere and eco tourism site adjoining the Taj Rishikesh. The walls of the Taj Rishikesh collapsed onto Singh’s low lying adjoining land and destroyed a swathe of pristine verdure where Singh was planning an apiary and butterfly park , the foundation of which was the natural forest and grass cover existent on the land since before the time he settled on it in 1995. On the night of July 27-28 2020 during heavy rain, on account of septic tanks which were poorly designed and therefore burst, the plinth wall and then the boundary wall of the Taj Rishikesh, both of which were also poorly built and which Singh had been pointed out since years prior to the owner, Arjun Mehra collapsed, showering an avalanche of huge rock debris which was used as “fill”, along with huge concrete pillar bases with angle irons, as well as slate from the inner plinth walls. However it was only in August 2021 that IJ Singh was able to register a Complaint with the Police Station Muni ki Reti after failed attempts for the previous 18 months almost.
The court order spells out clearly the violations by Taj Rishikesh not only environmentally but also in obtaining government permissions and NOCs and manipulation of revenue land records for this purpose .The court order also mentions that the combine of the Taj Rishikesh and the owner, used their immense clout to subvert the system not only in obtaining permissions but also in preventing Singh from registering his complaint and has directed the Police to investigate this.
The huge gigantic wall of Taj Rishikesh made of solid stones gave way and tonnes of hard rock and debris cascaded onto the premises of Inder Jit Singh just below the hotel. Messages and copious communication had been made by him prior to this debacle to the owner of the property and the hotel but the same fell on deaf ears. The authorities gave hideously false reports of the matter, so much so that the debris which exists still on the premises for everybody to see was reported to have been removed by the revenue department and the police at the lower levels clearly under the oblique influence of the formidable duo of the Taj group and the owner Mr. Mehra. The height is that a statutory authority has certified the pilferage and pollution of residual water by the hotel onto the premises of Inder Jit Singh but the revenue department reported no pilferage. Inder Jit Singh doggedly pursued his efforts to get justice in the matter through his advocate Mr. Vivek Vidyarthi and after umpteen notices, letters, meetings and communications, ultimately the higher officials of the administration took notice of the gross criminal negligence and a NCR could be registered. The hon’ble court also most graciously directed the police concerned to investigate the matter u/s 155(2) Cr. P. C. Deeper enquiries into the revenue records of the hotel have revealed that even the statutory permissions are based on manipulated and misleading details. The loss to the ecosystem is immeasurable and irreversible in terms of pollution and damage to flora and fauna of the region. The dream Inder Jit Singh to make a butterfly park of international standards is now reduced to ashes. Inder Jit Singh is awaiting justice to prevail with fingers…