HIMALAYAN Reset

There is new life in the old hills, as some of the original stakeholders of Mussoorie's cosmopolitan culture start working together to create a movement.

-  VIVEK MENEZES

It's summertime, with rhododendron blossoms spilling scarlet into the gorges of Jabarkhet Nature Reserve in Mussoorie. Perched high in the mountains serried upwards from the Doon Valley into the spectacular Garhwal Himalayas of Uttarakhand, the park is an intact montane forest ecosystem overhung with old-growth oaks, rhododendron and deodar, that has been painstakingly brought back from the precipice of disaster after being neglected for decades.

"Jabarkhet is an example of what can be achieved despite all odds," says Sejal Worah, programme director of the World Wide Fund for Nature in India, who spent her teenage years wandering through this landscape. Under her direction, Jabarkhet has emerged as a premier example of private forests being managed as successful public resources. This flourishing partnership between enlightened landowner, energetic locals, and expert conservationists also provides sterling metaphor for the pandemic-era phenomenon greatly revitalizing this storied hill station.

When Worah returned from working overseas over a decade ago-her family owns the beautifully situated Padmini Nivas hotel just off Mussoorie's much-maligned Mall Road-she headed straight to the wild areas of her beleaguered little hometown. "Now that I was looking at these places from the perspective of a professional ecologist," she says, “it was clear we were almost at the point of no return. It would have been easy to give up hope. The only alternative was to apply vision, passion, and commitment, and never give up. That's what happened at Jabarkhet, where nature has come all the way back, especially after the quietude induced by COVID-19."