How Ladakh is facing the double threat of climate change and overtourism

Deep within the folds of the Ladakh Range, on a freezing cold day in January 2019, I saw a snow leopard. The strange hush of a snowed-in landscape made one hesitant to even whisper, the only sound an occasional cry of a raptor, the muted conversation between two wildlife trackers, and an intermittent, whistling wind. I will always carry that moment with me, close my eyes and feel it, taste it. To me, that cold day, and the uncaring eyes of the snow leopard, will always signify the majesty of Ladakh. 

We’re now in the final few days of September, and the tourist season in Ladakh is officially coming to a close. How many people travelled to the “land of high passes” this season? Well, there are no official numbers, but it couldn’t have been less than last year, or 2022. Two years ago, an estimated 4.5 lakh tourists visited Ladakh between January and end-August, with 2.5 lakh tourists in June and July alone. In 2023, that number may have been even higher, closer to 7 lakh.

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Now, that’s a lot of people passing through one of the most ecologically fragile, and scarcely-resourced regions in the country. The narrow valleys of the Indus, Shyok, Nubra and Zanskar rivers are not equipped to carry the footprint of such a huge concentration of people, in such a short period of time.

But what does this have to do with climate change? Well, on the surface, nothing. But the thing is, just like any other unplanned and unregulated economic activity, rampant tourism, with all of its associated environmental pressures, tends to massively magnify and exacerbate the effects of climate change. To the extent that the adverse changes in the region are visible in less than a generation. 

There have been very few studies done specifically on Ladakh, but even anecdotally, it is clear that Ladakh’s cold desert climate is changing, and changing fast. Just take a number of news items from 2024. In January, the winter trek over the frozen Zanskar—famously called the ‘chadar’ trek—had to be massively curtailed, because the river just wouldn’t freeze due to ridiculously high temperatures. A typical day in January in Leh would see a minimum temperature of about -15 degrees Celsius, with day temperatures of about -5 degrees Celsius. This January, the minimum temperature was around -8 degrees Celsius, with a maximum of 4 degrees Celsius. 

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Nor was there sufficient winter snowfall, as has been the case for many years now. According to the Indian Meteorological Department, in November-December last year, Leh recorded only 1.2cm of snowfall. For 2022, it was 2.6cm, a far cry from the winter of 2013, which saw snowfall of 13.6cm. In fact, this January, the ice hockey rink in Leh had to use electric fans to keep the surface frozen. 

This snowless winter was followed by a summer heatwave, with day temperatures going up as high as 33.5 degrees Celsius in Leh on 28 July, while Kargil reeled at a high of 37.5 degrees Celsius. There were even reports of ceiling fans being bought by hotels in Leh to alleviate the heat.

Sujoy Das, a Himalayan photographer and writer, has been leading summer treks in Ladakh for nearly a decade. He says that while July and August are traditionally the warmest months, they’ve never been this hot. “I returned to Ladakh after covid in 2021, when I took a team for the Markha Valley trek in July. It was so hot during the days, and due to the high temperatures, there was high levels of glacial melt water, so rivers and streams had started flooding.” 

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The next year, he pushed the trekking dates by a month to the latter half of August. This year, after leading a trek from Shang to Rumbak, he has decided to push the trekking season back again, to early September. “The weather now is how it used to be in July.”   

Over the past fifty years, the Himalaya has become progressively less cold, with the number of extreme cold days declining by nearly 4 days in the past decade, while extreme cold nights have declined by 12 nights in the same period. Speaking to me in 2021, Leh-based wildlife biologist Tsewang Namgail, who is in his late forties, had said that when he was a boy, parts of Ladakh would get an average of 4-5 feet of snowfall in winter. “Nowadays, we hardly see that kind of snow. Winters are growing milder due to a lack of snow cover.”

What is happening in Ladakh these days are sudden heavy showers—some years even devastating cloudbursts—in the summer months. While some localized showers had always been a part of Ladakh’s summer climate, it never used to experience monsoon floods, until now. One of the main reasons for this is that as the climate warms, the hotter air becomes more capable of holding moisture, increasing humidity and rainfall. For a region that is primarily dependent on snowmelt water, all that the rain does is wash away the already meagre topsoil.

But the rain doesn’t replenish Ladakh’s groundwater, and there are many reports of springs drying up, even as glaciers slowly disappear. 

It is in this context that the additional pressure of unregulated tourism rears its ugly head, tilting the needle further into the red. Water shortage, heaped up garbage, diesel fumes everywhere. New hotels and guest houses coming up every year in what used to be the verdant gardens of Leh. Springs drying up from overuse, villages shifting because local glaciers are drying, marmot burrows destroyed by off-roading bikers. 

And the coup de grâce? A new policy for homestays decided upon by Ladakh’s department of tourism. Surely a good thing, a step towards sustainable tourism? Well, it would be, just that one of the mandatory stipulations for new homestays is that they should have flushing toilets, even the ones in, say, the remote Changthang Plateau. 

I think of that snow leopard, being driven higher into the mountains every year because it’s range is shrinking, and prey is harder to come by. Soon there will be nowhere left to run.

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