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Journalism of Courage
“That’s our river of hope,” says K Hamsa, 54, a tea estate labourer, pointing to the young, ribbon-like stream, gurgling out of a scarred and shorn rock face that was once a hill. Nobody knows about its origin, but Hamsa and his friends believe it is a sign that life has given them a second chance.
Over a year after the cloudburst tore down the Mundakkai-Chooralmala valley in Kerala’s Wayanad district late on July 30, 2024, flattening human settlements and splitting the river into two, ground zero is the first place the locals take the tourists to.
“There’s a memory of what we were. We will build on that. The stream will become a river, the trees will grow back, but this time, we won’t cut them. They hold the soil,” Hamsa says, pointing to the timber logs that the boulders brought down with them, a visible sign of how deforestation made the soil too fragile to hold the rains.
Caked mud, boulders strewn all over and the naked earth seem eerily similar to the trail of destruction after the recent landslides in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.
From tourist hub to fragile eco-zone
Once a tourist hub for its misty blue hills and forests, the Mundakkai-Chooralmala valley has been declared a fragile eco-zone by the state since the landslide.
While no human settlements are allowed there anymore, locals are given day permits to retrieve whatever they can from the ruins of their past lives — utensils, trunks and everyday things that suddenly seem valuable and anchoring, like an old armchair that somehow survived behind a mangled doorway.
Although there is no official policy on disaster tourism, the locals are determined to make the world aware of what they did wrong, own it and, more importantly, show how to set it right, responsibly this time.
On their weekly-offs from Harrison’s Tea Estate, located over 20 km away, Hamsa and his friends, Sudheer M, 48, Ummer, 62, and Ashraf K, 59, all of whom lost friends and family in the landslide, come here to pray for the dead and share childhood memories.
As they walk with The Indian Express through the ghost town, working their base as future tour guides since heavy rains mean no work at the tea estate, they exclaim, “That used to be our house, that was our verandah and that was our school, we played football here. We’ve never been apart from age four and we will hold this place up,” they say.
Some tea and cardamom plantations bordering the eco-zone have started opening up to tourists, giving them a first-hand feel. Resort owners in Kalpetta, a town over 20 km from Chooralmala, have put up kiosks to promote the small batches of honey and coffee made by Wayanad’s youngsters.
Rehabilitation efforts
As part of rehabilitation efforts, the district administration is training survivors for hospitality industry-linked jobs, said Praveen PP, the manager of the District Tourism Promotion Council.
“We are also running a ‘Wayanad is safe campaign’ to educate tourists that besides the two affected wards, the rest are fine. Although a three-storey limit was set for construction in these parts in 2016, hotels and resorts led to a construction boom. Now everybody sees reason and is willing to comply with the rules,” he says.
On the Meppadi-Chooralmala Road, ‘memory walls’ line each bend with faces lost to the tragedy. Outside ‘July 30’, a commemorative restaurant opened by Noufal K, 43, who became the face of the tragedy, cars are lined up for refreshments. A chef in Oman for nine years before the disaster, his parotta, beef curry and mandi biryani are a hit.
“The memory walls are a reminder of what our follies can lead to. All my kitchen hands are sole survivors of the landslide like me,” Noufal says.
Post-landslide, Wayanad has initiated responsible and low-impact tourism.
“A 2011 report by ecologist Madhav Gadgil had classified the entire Wayanad region as fragile. Yet, people invested in tourism without awareness. We cannot have multi-storeyed resorts or amusement parks here, but homestays can work. We are mapping the carrying capacity of tourism resources in Wayanad,” says Rupesh Kumar K, CEO of Responsible Tourism (RT) Mission Society.
For the first time, Wayanad will be capping tourist inflow, Kumar adds, “At Edakkal caves, we allow only about 1,900 visitors a day. Does that mean tourists will lose out? Not at all. Instead of mega tourism spots, we will disperse the tourists to smaller places and emphasise a range of immersive experiences in Kerala. We are looking at homestays in a big way as lifestyle and tradition are themselves a product.”
Post-landslide, Kumar has been working with local communities as stakeholders, particularly tribal communities and foresters.
“We changed the word ‘tribals’, which always confines them to a primitive, backward status, to ‘ethnic communities’, who are keepers of heritage and have made them stakeholders with homestays, educating them about the positives and negatives of development,” says Kumar, who witnessed 1,500 logs being ferried daily before the landslide.
Tourists can now visit spice plantations, and farms and tribal homesteads in Wayanad, and engage in activities like harvesting, cooking with farm-fresh produce, learn traditional farming practices, boat-making and coir-weaving.
“This ensures income recovery for families affected by the disaster. We have already trained 2,800 families to curate cuisine experiences. If you book a cuisine tour, you can harvest and cook your own food. This time, we had tourists cooking their own Onam feast. This is a way to re-orient tourists,” he adds.
Promotion of inclusive tourism Wayanad is also leading the way in inclusive tourism, including curating women-friendly tours. The RT Mission itself has started the Chitrashalabham Travel Company with women entrepreneurs, tour operators, homestay owners and guides.
“We have conducted safety studies in 78 destinations. The audit, based on parameters like community attitude, vigilance mechanisms, CCTV cameras, lighting, night patrol and so on, has been completed in 14 of them. The coir-making experience has been so successful that we are getting women tourists from Korea and Vietnam in big numbers. The owner of Vietnam’s biggest women travel companies was here with her group.”
As boutique tourism redefines the way tourists look at Wayanad, most tourism volunteers are Gen-Z, says State Local Self-Government Minister M B Rajesh, who is looking after linking every panchayat to the RT Mission. “We are now compiling the local climate action plan of each local body in Wayanad and synergising tourism with it,” he says.
According to Kumar’s social audit, the current stakeholders are young, with almost 40% aged between 22 and 24 years. “The youth in Wayanad are much better connected globally, leading projects and getting good returns. It is pride that works as a priority, not the price,” says Kumar, who started the Pink Lily Festival after paddy farmers in Kottayam district’s Malarikkal gave him a boat ride in their flooded farms that were rich in pink lily blooms.
“Now, houses bordering these fields earn Rs 50,000-1 lakh a month from car parking charges alone,” says Kumar, hinting at similar livelihood possibilities in Wayanad.
