A popular restaurant is in smithereens. The National Highway, presented as a lifeline for the state’s ambitious development and tourism initiatives—which also connects the rest of the country to Leh—lies disintegrated. These are the visuals coming out of Manali, as the river Beas wreaks havoc, decimating entire towns. According to the State Disaster Management Authority, 310 people have died in Himachal Pradesh since June owing to “floods, landslides and other rain-related incidents”.
The floods in Manali are the latest in a laundry list. Jammu and Kashmir has been battered by record-breaking rains. The cloudburst in Uttarkashi had the temple-town on its knees. The metropolis of Mumbai was effectively immobilised by this year’s monsoons. Delhi, to a certain extent, has also been handicapped. But the terrain matters. Mountainous regions like Manali need to be treated with care—construction and city-specific plans cannot be transplanted onto fragile ecosystems under the garb of handing local people an imagined future of prosperity.
In effect, a hill station like Manali has come to function as an extension of a city. Understood as a totem for Himachal Pradesh’s tourist potential—with lush valleys and promises of freedom from the shackles of city life in the plains—governments have viewed it as a poster child. As a result, it’s seen frenetic development; all of which has come to heel. An astonishing 690 roads are closed.
India’s hill stations have been leaving enough signs for the authorities leading the lofty development plans that have become the fulcrum of the tourism economy. Amid inadequate warning systems and unpredictable weather patterns exacerbated by climate change, the need of the hour is to take sustainable planning routes. And that’s why the flood in the hills is ThePrint’s Newsmaker of the Week.
A turgid Beas has swept through hotels and restaurants, washing away dhabas. Every image emerging from the flood-wrought region is a reminder of impermanence, and how these structures—multi-storey buildings—cannot be sustained.
In a report on the devastation in Dharali, geologist Piyoosh Rautela told Mongabay that traditionally, buildings were constructed on “stable slopes, away from rivers”.
“It was well understood that streams in the Himalaya are not always gentle. They are powerful and have carved out valleys over millennia,” he said.
Also read: Dharali floods a wake-up call for IMD, NDMA to buck up—the Himalayan region is vulnerable
Riverside stays, tourism projects
Today, tourist towns take pride in advertising hotels on the banks of rivers; it’s essentially their mainstay. A cursory Google search reveals names like Beas River Retreat, Hotel Riverbank, and Hotel Riverside Stays. Tripadvisor offers a list of lodges with views of the river. And people are descending in droves, in numbers beyond what the ecosystem can take.
The Himachal Pradesh Tourism Department website does not offer the exact number of hotels and homestays operating in Manali. However, the state saw 1.8 crore domestic tourists in 2024—the second highest after 2017—according to a report in The Tribune. Kullu, the district in which Manali falls, has long been considered a haven for foreign settlers from Israel and Russia.
Experts have consistently argued that this mode of tourism and unimpeded development is unsustainable for the region. This bout of floods has taken residents back in time—not to a bygone era, but a mere two years ago. It’s almost as if they are living in a time warp where the same damage is inflicted time and again.
“This was not the first destructive landslide to damage the community and infrastructure,” Ram Prasad Thakur, a local resident, told the Morung Express back in 2023, when the Beas had caused immense damage to infrastructure, triggered landslides, and left hundreds bereft. “This time, the scale of damage is less, but humans are responsible for this devastation.”
He was referring to the floods of 1995. Thakur has been living in Manali since 2022, after his retirement as Survey of India Director. He pointed to Burwa, a suburb in the city that falls in the ‘sinking zone’—making it prone to land subsidence. Yet, he said, the region is witnessing rising “tourism and socioeconomic development”.
“In the last two decades, Himachal Pradesh has seen a nearly 3,000 per cent rise in the number of tourists—from around 520,000 in 2001 to 15 million last year,” wrote Manshi Asher, an environmental justice researcher, in 2023. “The spike in the built-up area along the Beas floodplains, in contravention of all safeguards and regulation, created a situation where the surging river had nowhere to go and ultimately broke through the national highway and villages, sweeping away cars and villages that stood in its way.”
If it sounds eerily familiar, that’s because it is. Floods have woven themselves into the fabric of life in the mountains. Each year, there are news reports profiling resilient local people who have gone above and beyond to save strangers or their homes—acts that are then positioned as ultimate acts of kindness. But, as Asher has argued in the past, it is only during a moment of crisis that Himachal Pradesh and its people make it to the headlines and Instagram feeds.
“The only time or reason when the attention is on the mountains, is when they are calling (the tourists) or when they are falling (disasters),” she wrote on X.
Meanwhile, earlier this year, Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, who is currently in Bihar, announced a Rs 150 crore tourism project in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank. At the same event, the inauguration of Manali’s Winter Carnival, he also spoke of a Rs 15 crore bridge to “ease congestion” at the city’s entrance.
The tourism project, which is in Manali’s Kalath, is due to have a “hot water bath facility”, a “nature park”, and “other amenities”.
Meanwhile, reports say, there are already tourists ‘unhappy’ with mainstream hill stations. They are seeking greener pastures—seemingly ‘offbeat’ destinations.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)