Introduction
The great Himalaya, one of the longest orographic ranges in the world with the highest mountains on the planet, is home to more than half a billion people in Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, China (Tibet), India. Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. The Himalaya provide a life-support base for an additional 1.9 billion people who live in downstream basins, and three billion people rely on food produced in these basins, making the Himalaya an important resource for half of the world’s population. The Himalaya are a critical global asset for economic, sociocultural, and environmental reasons. The diversity of their physiographic landscapes, climates, and biotic systems makes the Himalaya an extremely attractive region for tourism. In addition, the region is very rich in cultural diversity, with multitudes of cultural mosaics, ancient civilizations, archeological assets, and other historical sites. The region is also known for its hospitable people, who embody the mantra. Atithi Devo Bhava, meaning the guest is God (from Upanishad, an ancient holy writ). Despite all these attractions and resources, tourism in the Himalayan region is still in its infancy and its contribution to the economy is below the global average because of several physical, social, economic, and political challenges.
Being one of the youngest mountain ranges on the planet and surrounded by densely populated areas with extreme poverty, the Himalayan region is highly vulnerable to both natural and human-induced environmental and social changes occurring at local, national, regional, and global scales. These changes include, but are not limited to. natural disasters, population growth, climate change, and political conflict. Their age and unique and dynamic geophysical processes as well as their cultural diversity, underdevelopment, and remoteness make the Himalaya different from other mountains. Fragility, marginality. and diversity are unique characteristics of the Himalaya (Jodha. 2001). This uniqueness has major implications for socioeconomic development in general and tourism development in particular, which warrants concerted attention in the area of tourism and sustainable development.
The Himalaya offer critically important geo-ecological, climatic, and cultural assets to the world (Wester et al.. 2019). The Himalaya are known for highlands and majestic mountains. The region is home to 400 mountains over 7,000 meters in elevation and 14 mountains over 8,000 meters and includes the Tibetan plateau, the largest and highest plateau on the planet (Douglas. 2021). The Himalaya are the source of 10 major rivers whose basins cover an area of over 4.2 million km2 (Wester et al.. 2019). The region is also known as the ‘Third Pole’, having the largest area of permanent ice cover outside of the North and South Poles, and the Himalaya play an important role in global hydrological cycles. The region is also diverse in terms of climate, with some of the wettest (over 10 meters of precipitation annually) to the driest (less than 20 cm annually) places on earth. The temperature ranges from over 45°C in the foothills and plains to the some of the coldest places on earth. The area’s topography and climate create a perfect environment for diverse flora and fauna, making the Himalaya one of most biologically diverse regions in the world, hosting four global biodiversity hotspots (Chettri et al., 2008; Wester et al., 2019).
Beyond astonishing geophysical and climatic wonders, the Himalaya are full of human stories. There is a deep spiritual and moral connection between the people and the landscape, as many mormtains. rivers, animals, and plants are considered sacred. Culturally, the Himalaya are the site of convergence of three major religions. Hinduism and Buddhism originated in the Himalaya, and Islam has flourished in the Western Himalaya. The region is a linguistic mega center, where one-sixth of all human languages are spoken (Turin, 2019). Despite the region’s cultural and linguistic diversity, one thing that binds the Himalaya together culturally is its role as the root of the Sanskrit language, one of the most complex and ancient languages in the world. Additionally, mountain communities have developed and adapted various complex systems, including languages, arts and architecture, agriculture, and institutions for resource management. These great inventions were not accidental; they were developed through trial and error over hundreds of generations. The Himalaya have been a place of discovery for millennia for vogic sciences, including yoga, meditation, and Ayurveda, and more recently they have been a living laboratory for geologists, paleontologists, archaeologists, biologists, and biomedical scientists. There is no place on earth where one can study human adaptations to high altitude better than in the Himalaya.
Despite the worldwide importance of the Himalaya, the region has been largely ignored by the global community and its initiatives (Wester. 2019). The Himalaya were explored and exploited by the British who colonized most of the land south of the Himalaya, including present-day India. Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The Himalaya were further introduced to the Western world as a mysterious and adventurous place by various novels and movi...
