Hi, I’m Akshit, a 24-year-old graduate of Tourism Studies and Avid Mountaineer from Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh. I love listening to music and experience the art and culture of the Himalayas. Currently, I am working as a Managing Host, The Deephill Vivid, Manali.
So, back in 2014 after passing my 12th standard, I was interested in studying natural and environmental issues. But sometimes your interests need a lot of courage. I went to pursue Civil Engineering in college first but I left after a year because clearly, that was not meant for me. Then I came back home, while not being aware of anything about my future. Then I started browsing online and read about, “How tourism in a conservative way is helping communities in Himachal Pradesh to grow their economy by providing amenities to visitors or travellers.”
One of the first things that came to my mind was to start from guiding visitors or trekkers, and taking them to natural and cultural places to know about its ecology, set the environment as well as future aspects of this field of interest, and do something to earn (even a little) for a living
With going times, I started to think deeply about the advantages and disadvantages of Tourism activities. Then in 2016, I went to a big city to pursue a Graduation in Tourism Studies.
I started learning about destinations and why they are famous and what uniqueness they have to welcome tourists.
But at some point, I was thinking of doing something different as many organizations are doing common things in this field.
Then in my second year of college, when it was internship time, I started browsing again and searching for an organization performing positive work in the field of tourism in a conservative way and help in growing communities. I came up with an organization, ‘Himalayan Ecotourism’ located in Tirthan Valley in Kullu, Himachal Pradesh, India. So, Himalayan Ecotourism is a social enterprise offering experiential tours and treks in Tirthan Valley, near the Great Himalayan National Park. They believe in sustainable development by promoting conservation and empowering locals, especially women.
Why is it first? Because I am from Himachal and I started from my place only. I got in touch with Mr. Stephan Marchal, Director of this organization. I was selected to work with them as an intern for 2 months. So, from here I learned something and changed me somewhere.
When I started my internship with them, I felt the change in me; I started working on a project about environment conservation, reaching out to local communities, finding the different aspects related to our project. It was a book for me to learn about tourism sustainably and responsibly.
At the end of my internship, I was just having a positive feeling inside of me that visiting places or exploring is not enough but doing something for its environment and local community is productive enough. After working with them, my focus was set towards tourism in an Eco-friendly way where I experienced that sustainability is important while adapting or bringing tourism to rural and all other destinations to maintain the local environment. Today, I am glad that learned something from here and changed in some way. After all this, I changed myself and started responsibly doing the tourism activities and also guiding people around me to do the same. And due to the current situation of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have to learn from nature about what are our needs and wants are.
Be a responsible citizen and a believer of what we want to live our lives in a better way to balance the environment situation so it can retain and we can give a better life to our future generations.
I would like to tell everyone through this medium of promoting stories of various people, and I would love to all of you to join the organizations in your local area or in rural parts of India to learn new things and change of perspective in your life.
Here are some links to my work:
https://youtu.be/yaKjE3HBgFA
https://himalayanecotourism.blog/2018/06/05/my-first-encounter-with-forest-fires/
https://himalayanecotourism.blog/2018/06/16/stop-forest-fires-campaign/