A tourist rush is swamping Himachal Pradesh – and the environmental cost is heavy

On May 24, Nitesh Thakur left Shimla in his car around noon, hoping to reach his village 200 km away in Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh by evening. But he soon found himself caught in a heavy stream of tourist vehicles on their way to Manali. “The vehicles were overtaking each other on the narrow single road, leading to the traffic jam,” he said.

Instead of the usual four hours, it took Thakur six hours to reach home. For those travelling on the Shimla-Manali highway, this summer has brought many such punishing experiences.

Throughout May, nearly 8 lakh tourist vehicles entered Shimla from different points. Of these vehicles, 70,000 arrived in Shimla over just three days, the weekend of May 22-24.

Routes to many famous tourist spots across Himachal Pradesh branch out from Shimla. The result was long, serpentine queues of cars on the highway, parking lots spilling over and Shimla’s narrow roads choked with vehicles.

Much of the tourist flow to the hill state had to do with the heat waves that swept north India as early as mid-April. The surge of visitors is good news for the state’s tourism industry, but the pressure of cars and tourists is straining the resources of Himachal Pradesh’s hill stations.

Thakur told Scroll that losing hours in traffic jams during the tourist season has become a common experience for residents across the state. “Many of the private tourist vehicles never follow lane discipline and stop randomly on the road to click pictures,” said Thakur. “At times, these tourists are intoxicated and aggressive when confronted.”

From unruly behaviour of tourists on the roads to littering and solid waste, Himachal Pradesh is struggling to balance the economic gains of tourism with sensitivity for the local ecology and culture. This comes at a time when climate change has already started battering the Himalayan region.

“By paying an entry tax, a tourist thinks he has purchased Himachal and can do anything he wants to,” said Thakur.

Heavy tourist inflow

The state’s annual tourist footfall has averaged around 1.63 crore visitors per year between 2014 and 2024, according to the Himachal Pradesh tourism department. This includes the slump in 2020 and 2021 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In 2025, for the first time, Himachal Pradesh recorded an inflow of more than three crore tourists. It was a nearly 72% increase from 2024, when 1.81 crore tourists had visited the state, according to the tourism department.

Kullu district, where the popular destination Manali is located, hosted the maximum number of tourists last year – 27 lakh – followed by Shimla, with 26.7 lakh tourists. Solan district also recorded a footfall of 24 lakh visitors.

Nowhere is the pressure of tourist footfall more evident than the 9 km-long Atal Tunnel, which connects Manali with the remote town of Keylong, bypassing the snowbound Rohtang Pass.

The tunnel significantly reduces the travel time between Kullu and Lahaul-Spiti districts of the state. It can handle 4,500 vehicles daily, but the number of vehicles entering the tunnel in the ongoing season has touched nearly 11,000 a day, shows traffic data.

The sharp rise in tourist traffic through the tunnel in May prompted the Border Roads Organisation to conduct a safety audit of the tunnel, its first-ever, on June 2.

Himachal Pradesh Revenue Minister Jagat Singh Negi expressed concern about the heavy vehicular traffic on the Atal Tunnel corridor. “There is a need to rethink our carrying capacity,” Negi told ANI on June 4.

For the officials manning Himachal Pradesh’s roads, the large numbers pose a challenge.

After 85,000 vehicles streamed into Shimla in the last weekend of May, the police have advised tourists to not enter the city if they are not planning to stay there.

Abhishek, Shimla’s additional superintendent of police, said tourists headed for high-altitude destinations beyond Shimla are being told to take a diversion via a bypass so that their vehicles don’t enter the city.

The police expect just as many vehicles over the next few weekends, Abhishek told Scroll. “That’s why we have adopted multiple strategies.” The police have also deployed 32 police bike riders to respond to traffic congestion promptly.

For residents of the state, the tourist influx brings many disruptions. Hem Raj, a government employee from Kullu district, said local residents have begun to shape their lives around traffic.

“To avoid getting caught in traffic, people leave home much earlier in the day,” Raj said. “While they are able to avoid traffic jams in the morning, they usually get struck on their way back in the evening. Among those most affected are school children who get stuck on their way home.”

Viral videos of road rage incidents and clashes between local residents and tourists have become common.

On June 1, a 60-year-old man was killed after a private tourist vehicle from Delhi knocked him down, dragged him along the road, and ran over him twice in Manali’s Naggar road area. Witnesses alleged that the car was on the wrong side of the road and its three occupants were driving under the influence of alcohol.

Two days earlier, on May 30, a parking dispute in Kullu’s Kasol escalated after a tourist from Punjab allegedly shot at a local resident.

Thakur said tourists need to respect local cultural sensitivities and the environment. “Pahari people are very simple and soft,” he said. “We are not used to aggressive and unruly behaviour in public.”

Environmental cost

The tourism sector in Himachal Pradesh contributes around 7% to the state’s gross domestic product. A research paper published in the International Journal of Current Science in 2023 notes that tourism has undeniable economic benefits for the state. “But this growth has come at an exorbitant cost to the environment,” say the researchers, pointing to increased waste generation, vehicle emissions, pollution, deforestation, endangerment and depletion of precious natural resources.

For instance, Manali sees about 30 lakh visitors annually. In 2021, Himachal Pradesh University’s School of Environmental Sciences conducted a study of the environmental impact of tourism on Manali and found that the tourist season produces more solid waste and sewage than the town can handle.

“About 35 MT (metric tonne) solid waste is produced during the peak season which is sent to landfill. Sewage production rises to 15-16 million litres per day, while Manali can treat only about 182 million litres,” it noted.

Residents like Thakur said tourists are also inconsiderate of the environment. “When someone is intoxicated, they hardly care about waste,” he said. “They litter everywhere on roads, mountains and all the fragile places.” Such waste often finds its way into pristine water bodies after rainfall in upper reaches of the area, blocking drains in the plains, he said.

Threat to glaciers

Along with climate change, the heavy tourist influx might be affecting the glaciers in the sensitive Himalayan region. According to Anil Kulkarni, one of India’s renowned glaciologists, dust kicked up by vehicles and black carbon emissions due to heavy traffic can aggravate the melting of glaciers.

“At many places, the road conditions are bad. When vehicles ply on this unpaved road, a huge amount of dust is generated,” said Kulkarni. Wind transports the dust onto the snow and glaciers, contributing to melting, he said.

Similarly, black carbon in the air during the snowfall season does not allow the fresh snow cover to last for a long time. “If you have a lot of traffic in winter, all the black carbon gets deposited on the seasonal snow which will increase its melting,” said Kulkarni.

Reduced snow cover can create conditions for forest fires. “With seasonal snowfall melting soon, the moisture content in soil is reduced during the early part of summer which can lead to forest fires,” said Kulkarni.

A landmark 2017 study of the Chandra basin glacial valley located in the Lahaul-Spiti district that Kulkarni was part of found that small and low-altitude glaciers in the region had recorded a water loss of 67% between 1984 and 2012.

Kulkarni’s anecdotal experiences of researching the Himalayas also tell a vivid story. “In 1988, I visited Lahaul and Spiti valley in Himachal Pradesh for the first time. During our studies, we would hardly see any humans for weeks in those glacial valleys,” he said. “Finding a human in those areas would be a pleasant surprise and we would often share food and other items with them.”

Nowadays, Kulkarni said, those same places have become camping sites for tourists. “It’s full of people.”