A doom with a view
In 2022, Kerala made it to the TIME magazine’s ‘50 extraordinary destinations to explore’. Just two years later, God’s Own Country is teeming with masses of tourists from across the country and the world. Consequently, the state has been included in Fodor’s Travel ‘No List 2025’—the global travel guide’s list of tourist destinations to avoid, citing “unsustainable tourism practices” and “mounting environmental challenges”.
The southern state has also been categorised under ‘Destinations Beginning to Suffer’. Particularly highlighted were the catastrophic landslides in Wayanad this year, numerous landslide incidents between 2015 and 2022, and the alarming shrinking of Vembanad Lake; a Ramsar site—the Ramsar international environmental treaty aims to conserve wetlands and their resources—and the backbone of Kerala’s backwater tourism.
Overtourism is the new torment of India, plunging popular travel destinations into an ecological and cultural nightmare. The pandemic of 2000 has a lot to answer for: revenge travel by Indians in 2021 meant 677 million domestic tourists spreading their air wings and stepping on the gas; a number that rose to 2,509.63 million in 2023.
In Goa, where the population is around 1.6 million, the state had more than 8.5 million visitors in 2023. Imagine that. However, the number of its foreign tourists are down by 60 per cent. An influx of digital nomads has driven up prices. While the surge benefits certain businesses, locals are finding it increasingly difficult to afford living in their own communities.
In 2018, India announced its plan to limit daily visitors to the Taj Mahal to 40,000 to preserve its iconic 17th-century structure. With millions of tourists visiting each year, the growing footfall was causing wear and tear on the white marble of the tomb. Experts warn that the crowds may cause strain to the monument’s foundations.
Similarly, overcrowding is common at Vrindavan’s Banke Bihari temple, and has led to six deaths from 2021 to 2023 due to suffocation. The 161-year-old temple, which has a daily average footfall of 50,000 visitors, regularly sees crowds exceeding one lakh on weekends and over five lakh on festive days. In 2023, Joshimath, a gateway to pilgrimage sites like Badrinath and Hemkund Sahib, as well as a skiing hub for Auli, was declared a “sinking town” as buildings and roads cracked, leaving many areas uninhabitable.
Experts attributed this crisis to rampant, unchecked development destabilising the region’s delicate ecology, compounded by the constant influx of tourists. Unchecked commercial development is also damaging sensitive regions. In places like Kasol, Himachal Pradesh, a rush to build homestays and resorts has driven up land prices, displacing locals and replacing natural landscapes with concrete monstrosities, causing deforestation and habitat disruption.
In Coorg, renowned for its coffee estates and lush landscapes, rapid commercialisation has pushed local infrastructure to its limits. Here too, homestays and resorts are putting immense pressure on water resources. “Local farmers, like me, now face severe water shortage. The region has drought, which has been exacerbated by the tourism boom,” says Ankita Nanda, who runs a small coffee farm in the area.
According to a 2018 study published in Nature, India ranks as the fourth-largest contributor to the global tourism carbon footprint, trailing only the US, China, and Germany. To counter this, travel guilt can maybe motivate tourists to adopt more conscientious behaviours. “However, it relies on both individual and societal awareness, alongside effective destination management that demands strategic leadership and governance,” explains Tanja Mihali, a professor at the School of Economics and the Business University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, and a former member of the World Committee on Tourism Ethics which works under the aegis of the World Tourism Organization.
The choice is yours.
STEERING THE NIGHtMARE: The adage across the world say the hills have memories. In tourist season, the 30-odd-km road from Dehradun to Mussoorie, once a sleepy, verdant colonial hill station built in 1823, is choked with traffic lines longer than the memory of its ancient ghosts Ruskin Bond is so fond of writing about. During peak season the police allow only about 2,000 vehicles to go up, unless the visitors have a confirmed hotel reservation.
Religious travel has rocketed over the decade: last reported figures show 1,439 million tourists visited religious sites in India, including 6.64 million international visitors in 2022. This year, the Uttarakhand Tourism Department says 5,21,965 vehicles reached the four shrines of Char Dham by the end of pilgrimage season—mid-November. Of these, a significant number reached Badrinath and Gangotri directly, raising vehicular and noise pollution levels and littering the once-pristine region. Kedarnath Valley was tourist Ground Zero: the number of vehicles at 1,87,615 was nearly double from last year’s count of 88,236.
This year, Gangotri was stormed by 8,18,273 outsiders and 88,236 vehicles. “The growing number of vehicles is damaging the Himalayan ecosystem seriously,” warns historian and author Jai Singh Rawat. Read traffic jams, haphazard parking, garbage and carbon dioxide fumes. Vehicular pollution is the main villain in tourist destinations. The rise of adventure tourism in Ladakh has increased traffic in an area vulnerable to climate change. “With more and more tourists renting vehicles to navigate rugged terrain, local air quality has taken a hit,” says Stanzin, who runs a homestay near Leh.
According to a 2021 study published in Frontiers in Earth Science, tourist vehicles contribute significantly to black carbon deposits on glaciers, speeding up their melting. In Rishikesh, overtourism has stressed the fragile River Ganga ecosystem. “The link between climate change and last-chance tourism is clear. Sadly, the media can’t make the same link between biodiversity loss and tourism,” says Lemelin. India’s rich cultural heritage is also at risk due to overwhelming crowds. “Cultural tourism focuses on top landmarks and historic sites, which often have limited spaces and are quite vulnerable to damage,” says Sandeep Arora, director of Brightsun Travel, India.
HOW IT STINKS: States need visitors with fat wallets. Tourism in Himachal Pradesh accounted for seven per cent of state GDP amounting to `14,000 crore, and generated 14.2 per cent direct and indirect employment, as per the latest economic survey. In 2018, its capital and popular hill station Shimla, once the summer capital of the British Empire, nearly had water riots—too many hotels built with scant regard for regulations to accommodate the tsunami of tourists which choke the Mall Road every year when residents struggle for water.
This year such a situation was avoided only because the administration cut water supply to six days. There are 276 registered hotels in Shimla besides 963 home stays and Airbnbs. Over one crore holidaymakers visited HP in the first six months of 2024: Kullu and Shimla districts drew 4.73 lakh and 4.48 lakh vacationists respectively. About 72.84 lakh incomers landed up in Manali last year; 17.36 lakh crossed the Atal Tunnel. Due to the heavy influx of tourists, trails of trash scoured the sensitive mountain ecosystem.
In Manali the deadly detritus of irresponsible travel, garbage, increased manifold; the waste treatment plant designed to handle 20 to 30 tonne of garbage daily was inundated with 70 to 100 tonne of trash. “The Himalayan region’s self-sustainable capacity has its limits. Where does the sewerage generated by millions of pilgrims visiting the holy shrine go? The health of the Himalayas cannot be over looked just for the sake of tourism or pilgrimage,” says Udit Ghildyal, Director, Himalayan Institute for Environment , Ecology & Development (HIEED).
THE OUTSIDER INVASION: Overtourism has plunged the country’s popular travel destinations into chaos, diluting local culture. “If we continue to live here, we’re more isolated than during Covid. It’s so crowded that we try not to go out,” shares 68-year-old Mohan M, who has lived in Ooty his entire life and watched its transformation with a heavy heart. With the rise of digital nomads, viral social media trends, and growing accessibility to destinations, wanderlust is at an all-time high in India.
“It is placing immense strain on both domestic and international destinations. In India, popular spots like Goa, Jaipur, Agra, and hill stations such as Manali and Shimla are struggling with overwhelming tourist volumes,” says Arora. Goa, once the coastal jewel of India which was one of the best global beachside destinations until the turn of the decade, is receiving more Indian travellers but fewer foreign visitors.
Goa media is already comparing the tourist-choked state with Spain, France and Greece where locals have taken to the streets waving placards saying ‘Tourists not welcome!’ Property prices in this once-laidback haven of beaches, villages, emerald paddy fields, chalk-white churches set against a cerulean sky and elegant Portuguese-built villas have zoomed vertical with out-of-towners buying vacation homes here. Builders have destroyed the natural beauty of places with high-rise condominiums.
“You can hardly see Goans now, it’s all people from Delhi and Mumbai. The locals really resent it,” is the popular grouse. Both prices and crime are up. It’s not just the overcrowding; littering, rising cost of living, disruption of local culture, weather changes and ecological strain have turned once-serene destinations like Ooty into overrun, fragile ecosystems and distorted its architectural heritage.
The main drawback is that harassed residents cannot protest because tourist destinations have no strong local economy with revenue coming almost fully from tourism. “Because of excessive traffic and illegal parking children get to school late,” laments Sanjay Haleja, who owns the popular Gulmohar Hotel in Mussoorie. Overcrowding is having a major impact on socio-economic life of locals especially in the hills of Uttarakhand.
LIVING ON THE EDGE: Ecological danger threatens South India equally. More than 20,000 vehicles enter the Nilgiris daily during peak season, according to a Tamil Nadu government report. Such mass tourism has sparked concerns over its impact on the local ecosystem, particularly elephants, and the ongoing drought.
In response, the court in April mandated electronic passes to be issued to all motor vehicles between May 7 and June 30 to track tourist numbers and vehicle types. As tourism-focused development takes precedence, it is driving up the cost of living. Locals like Vignesh, owner of a small lakeside restaurant in Kodaikanal, are struggling to make ends meet. “Many landlords have converted their properties into homestays, making affordable housing scarce. Rents are skyrocketing,” he rues.
Responsible travel is the buzzword in officialdom, but how much of a buzz it has created among travellers is questionable. In 2023, Kerala had an all-time rise in domestic tourist arrivals; around 2.18 crore. Former deputy director of the Tourism Department Prasanth Vasudev explains, “When we encourage people to travel, we should make them aware of how they should travel responsibly.”
Following the landslides in Wayanad, the High Court stepped in to rein in unchecked tourism activities and ordered the state to carry out a ‘carrying capacity study’ at the destinations. Just weeks before the disaster, the state’s tourism minister, PA Mohammed Riyas, had warned that Wayanad was “dealing with an influx of more people than it can handle, a classic example of a place facing the problem of overtourism”.
According to former chief secretary V Venu, a huge contributor is the lack of effective regulations. “A lot of construction is happening, destabilising the hilly terrain,” he says. In Landour where the rich and famous like broadcaster Prannoy Roy, actor Victor Banerjee and author Steve Alter live, resistance to tourists is more vocal, especially on social media.
Once considered the enclave of the elite, the tranquillity of this heavily pine-forested slice of Uttarakhand hillside coloured with rhododendrons has been disrupted by honking vehicles, selfie-seekers and holidaymakers who come for a sandwich at the snooty bakery. Says author Ganesh Saili “Every weekend, Landour is full of what a friend refers to as the ‘New Age vulgarians’. They are loud.
They are in-your-face with aggression matched by their cars and bikes. They go berserk, far outnumbering the overworked constabulary who try their best to regulate traffic. Better highways, wheels and social media combine to fuel these crowds. As local residents suffer, there is no quick-fix solution in sight. The way things are going, who knows, one may soon see human jams. We are the new plague.”
IN GOD’S NAME: Religious tourism has ratcheted up in the last 10 years after states like Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh went on overdrive to promote sacred sites. Kashi Vishwanath in Varanasi saw over 6,00,000 visitors on March 31, a non-festival day. The influx of tourists caused traffic jams, stretched local resources, and caused hygiene concerns. A total of 48,04,215 devotees participated in the Char Dham Yatra this year—the four sacred shrines of the Himalayas—Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri, and Yamunotri. It concluded on November 17.
However, this figure marks a decline of 8,14,282 compared to the 56,18,497 pilgrims in 2023. The main reason for this decrease was fear—severe landslides, sudden cloudbursts, and relentless rainfall have killed many tourists. Corruption is the usual suspect; hotels operating illegally have eroded soil strength, causing the earth to sink and buildings to collapse as it happened in Shimla and Uttarakashi.
A more pressing concern is about the effect of vehicular pollution over the rapidly retreating glaciers of the Ganges’ sources, such as Gangotri and Satopanth. Ninety-year-old Padma Bhushan awardee and leading environmentalist Chandi Prasad Bhatt laments, “The Himalayas are being neglected. The rampant helicopter flights and their thunderous roars are affecting the glaciers. In my childhood, when we ventured into the ‘Bugyals’ (high-altitude meadows), we were advised to speak softly and avoid wearing bright clothing.
Such actions could disturb the local wildlife.” The government is trying to prevent natural disasters like the flash floods and cloud bursts. Due to the number of devotees at the Char Dham Yatra growing, the Uttarakhand government made registration mandatory for visiting its four sacred shrines, starting 2022. This year, it got even stricter. Due to limited accommodations and ecological risks at Gangotri and Yamunotri, Vinay Shankar Pandey, commissioner, Garhwal division, said that only a restricted number of pilgrims can now cross it.
His statement came days after a video of the jam-packed Yamunotri temple route went viral on social media. Ashish Todaria, a local horse owner, underscores the importance of balance in this approach, “Tourism is vital to our local economy, but we need to ensure that the benefits reach the community without overwhelming our resources.”
Its also social media, stupid. The Fear Of Losing Out is causing a tourism wave. “Tourists desire to visit iconic landmarks, places of cultural or historical significance while they are still accessible. FOMO pushes them to overcrowded destinations. The perception of these locations as ‘must-see’ spots can overshadow concerns about overcrowding,” says Mihali.
Instagram junkies taking pictures on their cellphone and doing outrageous, or sometimes dangerous, poses in front of historical sites is the new travel normal. “What’s the point of going somewhere if you cannot be on Insta and get Likes? My hotel has a scenic view which is perfect for that,” reveals hotelier Rahul Dhiman in Mussoorie.
PLAYING SMART: Bucolic Odisha, seems set to be the next Goa. Known for its pristine beaches, freshwater lakes, wildlife sanctuaries and forest-clad hills, the state administration is facing new management challenges from overtourism, primarily in ecological sites and heritage spots. Alarmed by plastic pollution in protected areas and eco-tourism sites, the government imposed a blanket ban on single-use plastics inside sanctuaries, national parks and tiger reserves with effect from April 1, this year.
Assam, once a low-tourism impact region cannot take comfort from its past. The Kaziranga National Park, home to endangered species like Bengal tigers and one-horned rhinos, clocked a record-breaking 3,27,493 visitors between 2023 and 24. Such influxes cause habitat destruction due to excessive foot traffic and vehicles disturbing the fragile eco-balance of the park. In Sikkim, nearly 3,00,000 visitors, including 30,000 international travellers, arrived in the first quarter of the year. Projections flag 1.2 million tourists by the end of the year.
A reason travel is up to such places previously unpolluted by excessive and irresponsible travellers, is social media which informs users about unseen attractions like Nathula Pass and Tsomgo Chho Lake in Sikkim. Cleanliness is one of the hallmarks of Gangtok; the government has ordered that all tourist vehicles must carry large garbage bags. Likewise Meghalaya is shifting its tourism strategy towards enhancing the quality of visitor experiences over numbers.
“We wish to shift the focus from high-tourist numbers to high-quality experiences that respect the needs of our residents and the integrity of our natural heritage,” says chief minister Conrad Sangma. Travellers are also adjusting, opting for off-peak time travel and exploring lesser-known destinations. Vishal Chaurasia, an advertising professional and frequent traveller from Mumbai, explains, “I avoid crowds, expensive accommodation, and reduce pressure on popular sites.”
To promote responsible travel, travel companies are adapting their itineraries. Shashank Birla, co-founder of Wilderlust Expeditions LLP, which organises sustainable safari tours in India, notes, “Non-biodegradable waste is carried back, and during safaris, we educate guests about minimising their carbon footprint. We also encourage visitors to take part in conservation efforts like clean-up drives.”
The World Travel and Tourism Council predicts that tourism could grow India’s annual GDP contribution to INR 43.25 trillion by 2034. The Government of India is targeting 100 million inbound tourists under Viksit Bharat @2047. Tourism has become a faceoff between ecology and culture on one side and irresponsible travel on the other. Without strong emphasis on sustainable tourism, the short-term economic gains of tourism policies risk causing long-term harm, making overtourism an urgent issue that demands action.
Now.
Inputs from Narendra Sethi, Harpreet Bajwa, Sudarsan Maharana and Shainu Mohan
THE WHYS AND WHATS
1. Domestic tourism boom: According to the Mckinsey report, The State of Tourism and Hospitality 2024, India’s domestic market, fuelled by a growing middle class and a travel spending growth rate of around nine per cent annually, is set to surpass Japan and Mexico to become the world’s fourth-largest by 2030.
2. Social media and Bollywood: A single viral post featuring the crystal-clear waters of the Umngot River in Dawki or a pristine beach in Odisha can inspire thousands to add these spots to their travel itineraries. “Travellers seek more Instagrammable spots, which often worsens the situation,” says Chadha. Bollywood has been a powerful driver of tourism. The stunning Pangong Lake in Ladakh showcased in Aamir Khan’s 3 Idiots (2009), and the royal forts of Rajasthan highlighted in Jodha Akbar (2008) and Padmaavat (2018), have all seen their tourist numbers increase.
3. Cheap flights and mass tourism: The rise of airlines has made it easier than ever for people to hop on a plane and explore the country, from Kashmir to Kanniyakumari. According to The State of Tourism and Hospitality 2024 report, domestic air passenger traffic in India is expected to double by 2030.
4. Revenue: Many cities and states depend heavily on tourism as a major source of income. This reliance creates a vicious cycle where authorities hesitate to impose visitor restrictions due to economic concerns. For example, the 2022 Draft Development Plan for Shimla (2041) reveals that the hill station originally designed for a population of 25,000 now has over 2,40,000 residents plus a significant floating number of tourists. More foot traffic and littering has ravaged the area’s delicate ecosystem. “In places where tourism is embraced, there may be less resistance to high tourist numbers, potentially worsening overtourism. Conversely, regions with strong preservationist values may enforce stricter regulations to protect cultural and environmental resources,” says Mihali.
5. Management Mess: Tourists are choosing less-crowded destinations now. “There is a shift to offbeat places like Spiti, Gokarna, and the Northeast. While this eases the burden on popular destinations, it presents a new challenge: managing tourism in areas less equipped to handle large numbers of visitors,” says Chadha. For instance, the Atal Tunnel that connects Manali to Lahaul witnessed record-breaking traffic around Christmas last year. According to the Lahaul and Spiti police, “As many as 28,210 vehicles passed through the Atal Tunnel, the highest since its opening.”
6. Last-chance tourism: The travel trend focuses on exploring the world’s most fragile and endangered natural and cultural treasures before they are irrevocably altered or disappear. “While some travel is driven by the desire to witness cultural loss, it is largely motivated by the urgent realities of climate change,” says Raynald Harvey Lemelin, a professor at Lakehead University in Canada, who has published several studies on the subject. For instance, in Ladakh’s growing tourism sector, snow leopard tourism has become a significant niche.
7. Global appeal: Former Union Minister for Culture and Tourism, G Kishan Reddy, in a written response to the Rajya Sabha in 2023, revealed that foreign tourist arrivals surged from 1.53 million in 2021 to 6.44 million in 2022. In 2023, from January to November, the number climbed to 8.17 million. The tourism ministry is actively promoting tourism segments to sustain this momentum. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her recent budget presentation, also emphasised the government’s focus on the holistic development of iconic tourist destinations.