There is a thin line between adventure, extreme adventure, and stupidity. As the skiing expert famously said after the Gulmarg incident, “Avalanches do not occur, they are triggered” indicating that the quality of snow at this time of the year was too dangerous to go up for a skiing adventure. But a group of foreign skiers thought they could do it and went against the series of warnings issued by the relevant authorities.
Man is, undoubtedly, an animal that wants to achieve the impossible. The thrill that an adventurous task gives us is unmatched. Everyone wants a bit of a thrill in their lives. Every now and then we see on Instagram and Facebook how young men of the valley take a bag with them and leave on dangerous advance level hiking. Most of these inexperienced men and women have never done any baseline hiking or trekking but just to appear cool and post their pictures and videos online they venture on these dangerous expeditions.
The Kaunsarnag incident is still fresh in our memories where two greenhorn trekkers were separated when a big part of glacier, they were sitting on in the lake got fragmented into two. The one part which was still anchored to shore helped one novice trekker to go downhill by unstoppably running for six hours to reach nearest police station. All thanks to the timely intervention of army and state authorities the hiker who by now was in the middle of lake saying his prayers was rescued using an army helicopter.
The authorities must make permissions mandatory for these trekking expeditions. The government must at all points know who the people on the tabletop mountains are. A proper database must be maintained in this regard. Often, we have seen a lot of people disappear on a particular trekking route in Kashmir. These incidents can be stopped if we maintain a proper record of who is going for trekking. A pilot thing like this was tested in one of the higher lakes of Pahalgam but trekkers would dodge the mandatory permission somehow.
The government needs to be strict in this regard. There is a very thin line between adventure and stupidity. The government must clamp down on adventurists willing to cross the line.
