Gangotri National Park in Uttarakhand, India is a magnificent landscape that has been protected since the founding of the Park in 1989. While the park conserves and protects the landscape and the wildlife, it also plays an important role in protecting dozens of livelihoods. Mandatory guides that trekkers hire when visiting the park work seasonally around the national park as a primary source of income.
Mostly hailing from families of farmers, conditions today are very precarious to take up agriculture as the sole mode for bread-earning. Dozens of guides depend on the seasonal influx of tourists from around the world to the national park to hire them as guides - a process mandated by the National Park. Guides get by by being friendly, amicable, and incredibly aware and in touch with the landscape of the national park - a landscape most of them grew up around.
In these precarious times characterized by climate change and global warming, places and organizations like the Gangotri National Park play an important role in conserving the places and importantly the livelihoods of all who depend on the region.
