Uttara Sarkar Crees

Saving Shangri-la

I found Uttara Sarkar Crees of Gyalthang Dzong eco-tourism hotel tucked in a valley surrounded by mountains which generated energy of a kind which can only be found in a quiet valley where intrusion is minimal, an occasional Tibetan, tying a jinfen prayer flag to a stone on a mountain. It was this sense of oneness with her environment which Uttara projected in her speech and movement. She was now dedicating her entire existence to developing eco-tourism in the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau area, sharing her decades of experience with local government officials there, in an attempt to change people’s thinking. It was her goal to create awareness for what they had, and should keep.

“I am from India. I grew up in Africa and lived in Africa and India,” she explained pouring a cup of ginger Indian tea. “Then I was living in Nepal, operating an eco-tourism consultancy. I traveled all around the Himalayas right from Karachi to western Tibet. I never stopped for a rest. In 1987 I was invited by a Tibetan friends’ family to Shangri-la and at that time I lived for two months and just loved it. After ’87 I wanted to come back here because it was just so wonderful. As I was saying I had seen the entire Himalayas all over but I had not seen such beauty as I found here. It fascinated me and I wanted to come back and explore more. Eventually in the early 1990s my husband and I came back and received a wonderful welcome from the government here. Anything we wanted to do was fine. And of course my interest was eco-tourism, so we decided to come and set-up a traditional hotel that would offer Tibetan hospitality and start an eco-tourism operation.”

“Eco-tourism?” I had heard this term many times. Clearly it was in vogue. “Can you tell me what that really means?” I began looking into the cup of ginger tea convinced this time that Shangri-la must be somewhere inside.

“It is culturally and environmentally sensitive tourism. And tourism that can establish certain management standards in relation with places in order to protect the culture and environmental aspects of that area. It also must be sustainable. So these are basically the general principles that we follow in developing eco-tourism.”

The principles were simple, but clear. In fact eco-tourism does not involve all of the complicated management models of the tourist industry which you need to go to tourism management school to learn and require years in the hotel industry to acquire such skills of management. Rather eco-tourism as a concept, required a sense of common sense, something most people lose when they go to management school. It also required establishing a philosophical platform for one’s lifestyle, and then living it. “How is the eco-tourism concept going down in China? Is it received well here in Yunnan?”

“I think it took time but they are now very receptive. In China, vast numbers of people travel. They travel together in very big groups. That is what they think is good tourism. But it will take time to slowly understand the fact that tourism creates impact. It brings bad things as well as good things. If a management is put into a place for the purpose of meeting the impact then we are on our way to developing good tourism, quality tourism.”

“But by encouraging tourism into an area like Shangri-la, won’t it in the end endanger what we have. Maybe those searching for Shangri-la will come here and find the opposite of what they were looking for, because so many came before.”

“Absolutely, there is very real danger of that. I mean you see here in this grassland right in front of the hotel, we have at least 60 different varieties of wild flowers. If you were here in May, at the end of May, through the middle of June to the third week of June, you would not believe how many wild flowers there are here. We bring many botanic groups and they spend days just here, all impressed with the numbers of flowers. We have also very rare flowers too. So if you can imagine in a place like Bika Lake and Shudo Lake where hundreds of people are beginning to visit. If they trip all over each year, flowers will be less and less. This is the point of eco-tourism as a concept. You have guidelines in place. So the flowers and trees remain protected. There is no damage to the environment, or at least minimum damage that can be reversed. Otherwise the very thing that guests come to see will be gone in five to ten years. And garbage, the big problem with huge tourism is garbage. People throw their cola bottles out of bus windows, instant noodle packages are thrown out wherever they go. So there have to be guidelines and education in place to keep Shangri-la, Shangri-la.”

“But the local government is opening this region up to tourism,” I said feeling warmth of ginger tea emanating across a field of wild flowers, we were sitting in. “They are quite excited about the prospects, more flights and all that.”

“So far we only have very few direct flights. There are two flights out of Kunming, one flight a week out of Chengdu and one flight a week out of Lhasa, so there is not the huge numbers of tourists you see at other sites in China that are very popular. But the point is ten people who are educated or who are sensitive will create less impact than one who is not. There are people who throw trash every place they go, they will take their picnic lunch and leave everything behind, plastic will fly everywhere. That will infect the environment.”

“How,” I asked, “do you disinfect the increasing effect of more tourism?”

“There are tourists who will barge into local homes and not be respectful, or will buy everything they see. So education for visitors is very important. Here we have guidelines for each visitor which we ask them to follow. And we teach our guides to insure that these guidelines are followed. Hopefully next step will be to educate the drivers who are often with guests without guides, to say please don’t throw things outside, leave them in the car. I will dispose of them properly. Very simple management is needed, but there must be wide education across the tourism industry.”

“What is it that has kept you here in Shangri-la? You have lived in so many beautiful parts of the Himalayas, but in the end came here to stay. Why?”

“To be completely truthful, I used to suffer from asthma a lot. But since I have come here I am very healthy. I don’t take any medicine. I am both mentally and physically healthy here. People are just wonderful here, they are so hospitable. If you go out in the grasslands and you pass by the tent of a family. Even if they have a little bit of cheese, they will share it with you. This great spirit of giving here is what I really appreciate.”

“So it is the spirit of giving of Tibetan people which keeps you here in Shangri-la?”

“Partly that, partly the way people live. The religion in daily life, and the region, all over the area are spectacular beautiful areas. If you look out at the mountains in the back, you will see the blue poppy, which is a famous flower explorers were looking for years.” She pointed to a mountain behind the hotel, covered in blue flowers. Strings of jingfen were strung across rocks, indicating a point of spiritual power between the two peaks, a passage of energy flowing between the face of two rock surfaces.

“When I first came here, I was so charmed by the people and the region. So if Zhongdian town is called Shangri-la I think it is true because it is the gateway to Shangri-la. Beyond here you travel north towards central and eastern Tibet. They could all be called Shangri-la because they are special both in terms of scenic beauty and architecture.”

“Can Shangri-la be protected? Can eco-tourism really play the role you envision and set a pattern for sustainable development?”

“I believe it takes a lot of work. Small organizations such as ours have to be aware and through practice set an example through which there is a ripple effect. We try to educate all people who come in contact with us. When we are doing treks, we go on foot, on journeys passing through so many villages and communities, we will stay with them, work with them. Slowly there is a way to influence them. Certainly in garbage management, we are showing them, teaching values as well and how to protect what they have. But for more practical and quick results it is important that institutions involved in tourism, hotels, travel companies, tour operators, guides, to be educated about what is good tourism. That is the only way to keep the culture and environment here safe. Here the tourism department is very open-minded. Our governors are amazing. We talked about the problem of garbage, of plastic bags in the valley. As of April, there will be a fine for anybody caught carrying a plastic bag. There are also major efforts being made to take down the tiles, chipping tiles off the buildings, giving buildings a facelift, re-decorating them in a style with Tibet character.”

I was really amazed to hear this. Virtually every small city and town in China was virtually the same, faceless buildings with no character, covered with bathroom tiles and blue glass. Local officials think this gives a city a modern look because bathroom tiles are easy to clean. The problem is nobody bothers to clean them. But here in Shangri-la County the government was actually going against the national trend, chipping away bathroom tiles on buildings and giving them a Tibetan architecture facelift. For China, a real revolution in city planning and aesthetics was finally in the works. “That is happening right now, led by the governor,” Uttara emphasized. “It is amazing. This is one of those things you want to do in eco-tourism, to protect architecture and the uniqueness of each area.”

“So eco-tourism encompasses not just nature but culture, Not just the protection of environment as a natural environment but the uniqueness of architectural heritage, the traditions and uniqueness of a region? Is my understanding correct?”

“Yes. But this is only part. We have to find ways of protecting the bio-diversity, leaving it as natural and as wild as possible. We have a natural reserve with a whole range of mountains at the base of which we have local ethnic villages. The entire mountains are treasure of wild flowers and plants. There are some very tiny plants which are gradually going and disappearing from the other parts of the earth.”

“How does eco-tourism fit in, how can it save these regions?”

“There is an effort to help two of the villages earn from tourism and protect the area. They have to protect the area because it is their own land as it is and there is also their secret mountain and their secret lake where they go to pray. So there is an eco-tourism project to help the communities earn so as to bring in as much income as possible for the local communities to allow them to preserve and sustain both their environment and lifestyle. They in turn will conserve their own land. But we fear big developers coming in. They are now talking about one developer taking over 50 square kilometers to set up an entertainment park. That is exactly what should not happen here. That will change Shangri-la.”

“An entertainment park,” I was aghast at the idea. “Why do they need an entertainment park in Shangri-la? They have this kind of crass developments everywhere in China. Can’t they leave Shangri-la alone?”

“Very much so,” Uttara shook her head in frustration. “That is a trend all over China. Big developers go into a newly opened area. It is happening in Lijiang. It is happening in other areas of Yunnan. It is happening in other cultural heritage areas of China as well. They come in and their concept of tourism may be having an entertainment park. There are hundreds of entertainment parks all over China, I do not see why one needs to repeat it and have one here. The important thing is what is unique here. As important as what is unique of Lijiang, or unique in Dali. Each one has its own uniqueness. Here our uniqueness is that we are in a region which is one of only two hundred high bio-diversity zones in the world.”

“The developers and government cannot get this point into their heads?” The reality was simple. Developers pay local officials who approve plans allowing for the destruction of environment and culture. The village people are presented with an offer they cannot refuse. So they sell out. They often do not realize what they have and therefore are unwilling to fight for it.

“Village people are very simple,” Uttara explained. “Villages every where in every community are never totally united. There are always divisions of lands, families’ revenge left over from history. They can be bought. That is the danger. But through our eco-tourism work we help them to understand what they have. We do this through a story. There is a story about two frogs in a bowl of yak’s cream. One frog tries to jump out but finds the cream too troublesome to handle, accepts his fate and dies. The second frog never gives up. He jumps and tries to get out. Through his jumping the cream churns into yak butter. And he is free of the cream and he can jump out. So I think that is the moral for survival of eco-tourism here. All of us who believe in sustainable eco-tourism must try to keep fighting against the big forces. You must keep trying.”

Surrounding her hotel are two protector mountains of the valley. It is believed that luck flows into the shoulder between the two mountains. “Yes, we rebuilt the stupa that was built by our local partner’s great grandfather,” she explained. Rebuilding the pagoda was the first thing she did, before building the hotel. “And every year the staff of our hotel, print prayer flags and they are hung between the two mountains over the shoulder. The energy flows between the two shoulders,” she pointed to the energy