On a sunny morning this week near the Chang La pass, a long queue of vehicles patiently awaited their turn perched on a narrow strip of icy road with a vertical drop of several hundred feet on one side and steep hills with boulders and loose snow that could, on the slightest geological provocation, avalanche down on you, on the other.
At 17,586 feet, Chang La is one of the highest roads on the planet. The air is thin and most people heave to breathe. Those who are not acclimatised can get acutemountain sickness. This morning, it had snowed. When a vehicle or two passes over fresh snow, it is pressed together to form a sheet of slippery ice over which thick rubber tyres of the next vehicle can skid fatally. Every time a vehicle is thus stuck, workers of the Border Roads Organisation come by and shovel the snow off the tracks to allow the vehicle to pass.
It's a laborious task. Progress is slow. Bright snow on lofty peaks shone in the summer sun all around. Vehicles range from muscular SUVs to puny cars with 800cc engines. Registration plates relate the long journeys they have undertaken, from Delhi, Rajasthan, Chandigarh and Karnataka. Once they cross Chang La, they will drive another 65 kms to reach a surreally beautiful blue lake—the Pangong Tso—on India's border with China. It was on the shores of this vast lake that the climax of Rajkumar Hirani's 2009 blockbuster Three Idiots was shot, featuring Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor. Ladakh's stunning mountains, streams and monasteries have been justly famous for long.
But the success of Three Idiots has shaken up the patterns of tourism in Ladakh, causing a surge in the number of domestic tourists and affixing at the centre of the tourist trail locations from the movie, such as the Druk White Lotus School and the Pangong lake. "Three Idiots has had a big impact on tourism in Ladakh. Inbound tourism to Ladakh used to be small, and most of it was international traffic.
After the film, the domestic tourist traffic jumped massively and now we are getting nearly 1.7 lakh tourists in a year," said Rigzin Spalbar, chief executive councillor of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council. Hit to Superhit Three Idiots released in December 2009. That year, according to the local tourism office, 48,517 domestic tourists visited Ladakh. In 2010, when the film became the highest grossing Bollywood film at the time, 55,685 domestic tourists made their way to Ladakh. The next year, the domestic visitors more than doubled to 142, 829. Last year, 1.4 lakh domestic tourists visited, contributing to a record number of 1.79 lakh visitors in all.
"Ladakh was always a hit. Three Idiots made it a superhit," said Nissar Abdu, promoter of Hotel Spic and Span in Leh. "Earlier we had to suggest that people include Pangong lake in their itinerary. Now they all know Pangong and want to go there first," he added. At the Druk White Lotus School, an awardwinning residential school run by the Drukpa order of Buddhism, there has been such a surge of visitors that the school had to build a new visitor's facilitation centre. Last year, 65,000 tourists visited the school, which was little known before featuring in the film.
After a round of the school's sustainable architecture, solar panels and Montessori methods, visitors can have a snack at the Rancho coffee shop within the school premises, named after Aamir Khan's character in the film. School principal Prasad Eledath says the film has made the school very popular but the surge of visitors had started to disturb classes. Once they put in place a mechanism to regulate visitors, things have improved. Locally, the school has come to be known as Rancho school.
Eledath shakes his head in mock exasperation when this is mentioned. "As far as I am concerned, this remains the Druk White Lotus School or the Druk Padma Karpo School," he said, during an interview in his office that looks out to snow-capped peaks across the Shey valley.
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