Hi there,
Ladakh welcomes you all for the much anticipated and renewed 2021 after a long haul of one year of literal lock down of the world community as such, leave aside the trans-Himalayan region of Ladakh on the map of the world.
During this one year we lost many of our near and dear ones due to Corona and other terminal diseases. My heartfelt prayers go towards the members of the bereaved families all across the world also in our own country and Ladakh region.
But they say that the show must go on, we cannot hold on to our miseries and misfortunes but must ‘Skeyraks dom’ as we say in Ladakhi that is, tie our belts and continue forging ahead with cautious optimism and hope.
H H Dalai Lama too has been giving his guidance of hope and optimism to hundreds of his devotees all across the world through webinar meetings from his home in Dharamsala. He has been repeatedly emphasizing that we are all social animals and we need each other and there is no alternative to warm heartedness!
Modern education was meant to create a better society not an individualistic competitive and an estranged society? Our country India and so as Ladakh has its own culture, heritage, history and ethos. We cannot go on copy paste western model and ways of life into our cultural rich society.
Over the years I have observed that foreign tourists visit our country or Ladakh region to see and learn from our culture and way of life and daily toll. They go back much enriched when they leave our country and continue their life with renewed hope and cherished dreams. This personally I feel is the correct approach of any form of tourism.
But in a much changing and demanding society new forms of tourism are also encouraged just for the sake of money sacrificing ethos and culture. Question is do we want such forms of tourism in Ladakh, this our society must debate for itself.
In the initial stages of foreign tourism in Ladakh during 1974 our elders were rather skeptic about this initiative of the central government. But then our society took up the challenge with fortitude and cautious optimism. The Ladakhi society managed the world tourism as it came on its stride. Instead the foreign tourism influencing our culture, our culture changed their outlook! Bye for now.