GREEN SIKKIM?

Letter:
Twelve of us from all across America recently returned from a 16-day trip to India with most of it spent in Sikkim.  We love India, its diversity, history, arts and culture, and yes, its magic, mystery and bewildering contradictions that make it a unique travel experience for Americans like us.    Collectively, we have visited the many corners of your country more than fifty times--from Mumbai to Nagaland, from Kolkata to Rajasthan.
This time, we visited Sikkim, lured there by tales of her natural beauty, ancient pathways, sacred monasteries and of course her beautiful people.  We found the people of Sikkim to be gracious, warm and welcoming and our guides knowledgeable, energetic and capable.  So it is with saddened hearts that we write this letter because the Sikkim we travelled halfway around the world to visit, "Green Sikkim,” is fast losing its natural beauty and so, its attractiveness as an international travel destination.
We found its wild rivers subject to huge hydroelectric projects and their banks despoiled with trash.  The Gangtok roads were clogged with traffic and the air, even far from the Capital, was often smoky and smoggy endangering views of one of your most sought-after sights, the incomparable Himalayas.  In Pelling, hotels were planned (some said 90) that would mar the landscape and in Yuksom, the old yak trail was destroyed by road building.  Despite Sikkim’s ban on plastic bags, we found the trails littered with food wrappers and other garbage.
The promise of “Green Sikkim” seemed far from the reality.
Perhaps you do not think that we Westerners should have a say in what happens to your country but it is only because we love it that we are writing this letter in the hope that it will reach the people with the authority to make changes while there is still time. Americans have made their own mistakes by not protecting their natural beauty.  Some of you may recognize the name of one of our most treasured national parks in California, Yosemite.  Far fewer know that its “twin”, Hetch Hetchy, disappeared forever when it was dammed and flooded to provide drinking water for San Francisco.
 There is still time for Sikkim to re-balance overdevelopment by designating large accessible areas as national parks and some of your rivers and lakes as “’forever natural”. Please do not think that we want to place Sikkim in a time capsule so that domestic and international tourists can see “the old Sikkim.”  We understand the pressures you have for electricity, roads, bridge and other infrastructure if you are going to provide your people with jobs, health and modern conveniences .  But, there must be a balance between development and preservation if you want to grow one of your most important industries – tourism.   All the beautiful hotels in the world will not make up for the fact that your natural beauty has been lost forever and that the people who depend on tourism for their livelihood will lose their future.
Respectfully,
Rigney Cunningham, East Orleans, Massachusetts; Ralph Hurtado, Pasadena, California; Carol and Ned Cain, Green Bay, Wisconsin; Beth Gertmenian, Pasadena, California; Elizabeth Levitt, East Orleans, Massachusetts; Melissa Boggs, Arroyo Grande, California; Carol Anne Wood, New York City, New York; Jay Murphy, Washington, D.C.;  Lucy Clark , Bakersfield, California