00:00After every Himalayan disaster, the same script runs.
00:03An inquiry, a report, a promise of sirens on the lakes, a relief fund.
00:07And at the very same time, on the very same mountains, the roads are being widened,
00:11helipads are being cut, railways are climbing higher.
00:15With one hand, we write the mountain's prescription.
00:18With the other, we reopen its wounds.
00:20Understand what the Himalaya is.
00:21These are the youngest mountains on earth.
00:23Geological children, loose, unfinished, unsettled.
00:26What holds them together is ice, the glaciers and the permafrost.
00:31Permanently frozen ground that works as cement on the steep slopes.
00:35That cement is now thawing.
00:37The mountain is coming loose.
00:38And on this loosening mountain, what are we running?
00:41A fairground, widened highways, so the SUV can drive to the shrine.
00:45Chartered buses.
00:45And for those who find even that inconvenient.
00:48Hills cut open for helipads.
00:50The pilgrim walked.
00:51This case is different.
00:52This is the machinery built to carry the rest of us up without walking.
00:57Crowds poured onto the most fragile terrain on earth.
01:00And all of it has been given a name.
01:02Development.
01:03Every road driven deeper into a thawing mountain is another wound in a body already bleeding.
01:08And we are inviting the traffic in.
01:10Come, come, come on the SUVs and the chartered buses.
01:13The river, the ice, the magi, the beer.
01:15So what is the first honest step?
01:18Tell the truth at the toll gate.
01:19The Himalaya is not a place for cheap tourism.
01:22Whoever goes up must pay the whole cost of going.
01:25And the whole cost includes what it costs the mountain.
01:28A steep entry fee on every road that climbs.
01:31A heavy tax on every vehicle that does.
01:34Not as punishment.
01:35As justice.
01:36Someone will object.
01:37This reserves the shrines for the rich.
01:39No.
01:40It lets the shrine remain a shrine.
01:42We call these mountains Devbhumi, the abode of the gods.
01:46Then ask, is it devotion to build machines for barging into the house?
01:50Or to keep the house from collapsing?
01:51The real act of Dharma today is not to scale the Himalaya.
01:55But to save it.
01:56Not the boast of having climbed.
01:58The humility of having protected.
02:00Otherwise these peaks become vast monuments of barren rock.
02:04Collapsing monuments because the ice that held them together is gone.
02:07Come, come, come.
02:09For this is development.
02:10No.
02:11This is death.
02:11This is death.,
02:11and this is death. Have
02:12a great day. I
02:13go. Go,
02:14go, go. Go,
02:14go, go. Go,
02:14go, go, go. Go,
