Located about 123km from Srinagar, and at an elevation of around 2,400m above sea level, Gurez is a picturesque valley close to the Line of Control. Surrounded by thick forest cover, mountains and expansive grazing lands with the Kishanganga river through it, the heavily militarised border area remains cut off for over six months from October due to heavy snowfall.
Gurez Valley was once part of the famous silk route. The people here identify as Dards, speak the Shina language and have ancestral connections with Astore and Chilas in Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan. Until 2020, one needed a border permit to enter Gurez Valley from Bandipora district in Kashmir. Following the ceasefire agreement between India and Pakistan in February 2021, hundreds of tourists have been arriving here every summer, changing the unique character of the valley.
For a place with an estimated population of over 50,000, around 100,000 tourists have visited Gurez Valley so far this year, according to official data. This is up from a mere 3,000 in 2021-22 and 50,000 in 2023. Until a few years ago, locals largely lived off the land with agriculture and livestock rearing being the main sources of livelihood. While Gurez’s residents—long cut off from the rest of the country by both politics and geography—welcome tourists for the economic opportunities they bring, they have also seen it’s impact on their culture and environment.
Forests to campsites
Bashir Ahmed, a farmer, sits on a rock outside his home in Badwan village, as he watches tourists arriving in cabs and SUVs at the nearby campsite. The 54-year-old remembers exploring the forests of Gurez Valley as a young man and drinking water from the Kishanganga’s many streams. “The campsite is where my family’s ancestral home once stood. We used to play by the Kishanganga river and get fresh water every morning. Now it’s polluted, and we can’t drink straight from it anymore,” he says.
Ahmed points to the litter—bottles, food wrappers, alcohol cans and other waste—floating in the river or stuck along its banks. “These water bodies, the small tributaries and streams passing through our villages have been polluted as more tourists visit every year and leave all sorts of waste behind.”
Waste disposal systems are yet to be put in place by the local authorities. At the Badwan camp site, where more than hundred tents were pitched for tourists this summer, this writer saw just one truck gathering waste from various locations. It was to be transported to the lone dump site in the village. Locals say there is a need to have a proper waste disposal mechanism, especially at the camp sites.
“We had never even seen alcohol bottles earlier but they are everywhere, including the river front and in the streams,” says a resident who runs a tea stall near the Habba Khatoon spring. “Our children also see these things and it affects them negatively.”
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Bashir Ahmed sitting outside his home.
This summer there were 50-80 camping tents in Badwan—the number can go up depending on the tourist rush. In peak season, most of the villagers turn their land into camping sites. Some even set up camps in their backyards, where they once used to cultivate vegetables and other crops.
There are other visible signs of increased commercialisation, especially in the main tehsil headquarters of Dawar. Every second home has been converted into a hotel or a homestay, with no zoning for commercial and residential areas. New hotels are under construction, which is rapidly changing the distinctive character of the villages, known for their traditional wood houses.
“The massive unplanned tourism has wreaked havoc on Gurez’s ecology and environment. People who lived close to nature are gradually detaching their ties from the environment,” says Bandipora-based sociologist Suheel Rasool Mir, author of Cultural Encyclopedia of the Dard Tribe: Journey through Gurez and Ladakh (2024). “The inhabitants of Dawar are transforming their ancestral, cultivable land into hotels, cafés and restaurants without taking sustainability into consideration.”
A little further from the villages, is the 330 MW Kishanganga Hydroelectric Project, which was started in 2018. Ironically, electricity supply to the valley is patchy and unreliable. Dawar was electrified last year, but almost 90% of the Gurez Valley relies on small diesel generator sets for electricity. Factor in the tourists who demand 24-hour power, and imagine the diesel-fuelled air pollution.
The “untouched beauty” and “pristine peace” that travellers seek when they make plans to visit “offbeat destinations” such as Gurez is under threat. “Both the state and Central governments should be more mindful about the protection and the conservation of this rare Shina-speaking tribe but unfortunately they have failed to develop a socioecological model of tourism. If this is not done, Gurez will lose both its unique ethnicity and ecology,” Rasool Mir cautions.
Erosion of language
Rasool Mir says the three sub-regions of Gurez Valley speak different languages. Kashmiri is spoken in Bagtore, Dawar is bilingual with both Kashmiri and Shina in use, and Tulail residents speak Shina.
“The difference comes from the fact that Bagtore is closer to Bandipora, has more access to the Kashmiri heartland, and the people of Bagtore are migrants from Kashmir who came and settled in Gurez. The people of Dawar are fluent in both Kashmiri and Shina due to trade links with Kashmir and also due to intermarriages,” explains Rasool Mir.
“The people of Tulail primarily speak Shina but have also chosen Urdu as a secondary language, which was not the case earlier,” he points out, adding that the reason for this is the usage of Urdu in schools for teaching purposes. “Teachers from Kashmir who are posted in Tulail cannot speak the Shina and in order to communicate, students from an early age are exposed to and made to learn the Urdu language,” he says.
According to Rasool Mir, the socio-linguistic identity of the Dard tribe is getting eroded as Shina speakers try to imitate the dominant tourism trend. “They feel that their language is unproductive, so they are adopting the ‘productive’ linguistic elements, that is, Kashmiri, Urdu and English. The present young generation in Gurez hardly speaks in Shina language with each other,” he says, “they are more influenced by Kashmiri culture and language.”
Echoing similar sentiments is Abbas Beigh, who works in a restaurant in Dawar. He feels that in the next few years, “very few Gurezi people will be left here who speak Shina”.
Tourism has also created new habits and patterns of migration. Beigh says more than half of Gurez’s residents leave the valley at the start of winter to live in nearby districts like Bandipora and Baramulla. “People are increasingly converting their homes into homestays. They return during the summer months due to the tourist rush,” he adds.
Rasool Mir says that many residents who had migrated to other parts of Kashmir are also returning to Gurez as investors, building hotels, resorts and infrastructure.
Muhammad Azad, a government school teacher from Achura area, points out to another problem. “Many young people see opportunities to earn a quick buck during the tourism season, which is good, but the downside is that they are no longer interested in pursuing higher studies,” he says. “Without a strong educational foundation, their opportunities will be limited in the long run.”
Dawar resident Farid Ahmed Lone wants tourist numbers to be controlled, maybe with permits. “If the same concretisation and commercialisation continues, after a few years, instead of the greenery and beautiful environment Gurez is known for, it will be all concrete,” he says. “Even tourists would not like to come here just to see concrete structures.”
Majid Maqbool is an independent journalist based in Srinagar.
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