Tourism-driven growth in the Himalayas is intensifying seasonal water stress, exposing how governance failures and climate vulnerability are converging to undermine the region’s ecological and urban resilience
Tourist destinations across the world, such as Shimla, Ladakh, and Goa in India; Bali in Indonesia; Bodrum in Turkey; Siem Reap in Myanmar; Cape Town in South Africa; Naxos in Greece; and Koh Samui in Thailand, are increasingly facing water crises, particularly during peak tourist seasons. In most of these cities, the scarcity is not due to absolute hydrological factors but to a sudden surge in demand following an increase in tourist influx. This scenario leads to infrastructure stress and inequitable water allocation among different stakeholders. Water crisis, in this sense, becomes less an ecological inevitability than a governance outcome shaped by the political economy of tourism-led urban development.
In the Himalayas, the distinctive terrain constraints of mountain geographies amplify this phenomenon. Limited storage space, lifting of water over long distances, multi-faceted energy dependencies, and exposure to climate extremes and hazards, such as landslides, flash floods, and GLOFs, make Himalayan urban water systems structurally fragile. Tourism-induced pressures thus interact with climatic and geomorphological vulnerabilities to produce a unique form of urban water stress: episodic, unevenly distributed, and difficult to govern with conventional planning tools.
As the youngest fold mountains, the Himalayas hold 15,000 glaciers whose meltwater feeds major rivers, including the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Yamuna, Mekong, Salween, Irrawaddy, Yangtze, and the Yellow River, supporting about 1.3 to 1.5 billion people downstream. At the same time, the Himalayas are also rapidly urbanising, integrating into global circuits of tourism and experiencing accelerated construction, infrastructure reorientation, and seasonal population booms. The rapid growth in tourism in the region over the past two decades has coincided with environmental change across the Himalayas, marked by glacial retreat, altered precipitation patterns, declining spring discharge, and increased extreme weather events.
Tourism-induced pressures thus interact with climatic and geomorphological vulnerabilities to produce a unique form of urban water stress: episodic, unevenly distributed, and difficult to govern with conventional planning tools.
Between January 2022 and March 2025, the Indian Himalayan states experienced extreme weather events on 822 of 1,186 days, resulting in the deaths of 2,863 people. Meanwhile, tourism continued to rise, with Himachal Pradesh alone hosting nearly 20 million visitors annually, placing pressure on the state’s water supply services. The Himalayan cities are also confronting a mounting polycrisis, with climate extremes, deforestation, groundwater decline, rapid urbanisation, overtourism, and lagging basic services reinforcing one another. The paradox is that the very economic model that positions tourism as a pathway to prosperity generates conditions that threaten its long-term viability. Himalayan tourism must be reimagined not merely as an economic strategy but as a water-sensitive and climate-resilient development pathway.
Data shows that the Himalayan towns and cities experience tourist influxes, particularly during the summer heat‑escape months and festival periods that do not always align neatly with local rainfall and recharge cycles. In recent years, however, these influxes have increasingly coincided with episodes of extreme weather, compounding existing vulnerabilities and amplifying disaster risks and impacts. In Himachal Pradesh alone, there have been multiple extreme events in the past year, with no regulation in place for tourism. While tourism growth in the state has led to improved access and road connectivity, active tourism promotion, destination branding, and the expansion of budget hotels, it is questionable whether this growth happened in a calibrated manner with ecological and infrastructure augmentation.
Figure 1: Seasonal Variation in Total Tourist Footfall in Himachal Pradesh in 2024
Source: Author’s illustration using Tourist Statistics data
Himachal Pradesh witnessed a rapid tourism growth between 2022 and 2024, which coincided temporally with an escalation of extreme weather events, including cloudbursts, flash floods, landslides, and prolonged dry spells. Figure 1 above shows the seasonal variation in tourist arrivals in 2024, with a spike in May and June. Prolonged dry periods during the summer months reduce base flows. Under such conditions, high tourist footfall intensifies competition for already-stressed water systems. This marks a contradiction in Himachal Pradesh’s development trajectory, reinforcing the political economy of growth-first governance in the mountains, decoupling tourism growth from environmental feedback.
Studies have shown that tourism-led urban transition has altered many of these cities. For example, Leh’s traditional water and sanitation management practices have been replaced by centralised and engineering solutions. The misalignment of such an infrastructure-focused approach with the local geography may explain the groundwater depletion and contamination that Leh currently faces. The total water supply capacity in Leh is 6.07 MLD, while the total water demand stands at 7.5 MLD. The floating population of tourists, workers, migrant labourers, and the defence forces further widen this gap. Over 80 percent of the current water needs are met through groundwater. In Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, people receive as little as 60-70 litres of water per person per day (lpcd), significantly less than the recommended standard of 135 lpcd set by the Central Public Health and Environmental Engineering Organisation (CPHEEO). Sikkim recorded its highest-ever domestic tourist arrivals in the January to May 2025 period, with 8,43,231 visitors.
Leh’s traditional water and sanitation management practices have been replaced by centralised and engineering solutions. The misalignment of such an infrastructure-focused approach with the local geography may explain the groundwater depletion and contamination that Leh currently faces.
Similarly, Shimla, the former summer capital of British India, came close to “day zero” in 2018, with several localities going without piped water for around 10-15 days. The shutdown of a major water source, Ashwani Khad, due to a 2016 contamination issue, and a 24-hour power cut that disrupted water lifting were identified as the main triggers behind this crisis. But the role of tourism in exacerbating this crisis infuriated residents, leading to a massive campaign urging tourists not to visit Shimla. In Nainital, the water level of Naini Lake, the city’s main source of water, has dropped to 4.7 feet, its lowest in five years.
This problem is not restricted to the Indian Himalayan cities. Climate change is redrawing the map of human habitation in Upper Mustang in Nepal, where settlements are being uprooted as springs dry up and water for drinking, irrigation, and livestock becomes scarce. The capital city of Kathmandu faces frequent water shortages and poor-quality drinking water. The city suffers from excessive groundwater extraction, high non-revenue water, land-use changes, climate uncertainties and governance challenges. Bhutan, too, despite having an estimated 80 billion cubic meters of available water, faces chronic scarcity due to infrastructure, planning, and distribution issues.
Collectively, these cases underscore the central insight that water scarcity is not merely a climatic outcome but a mediated crisis of planning, allocation, and resilience in the Himalayas. It demands a fundamental rethinking of how tourism growth is governed in relation to hydrological limits and environmental and social justice.
Demand-side management and integrated planning that mandate unified Tourism-Water-Waste Master Plans at the municipal level could be a beginning point. Visitor caps can be enforced based on the region’s carrying capacity.
Himalayan cities have not integrated water management in tourism planning. They also do not monitor the different water extraction mechanisms, such as borewells, tankers, and others. Moreover, current interventions tilt towards supply-side fixes to protect tourist experiences, often at the cost of the ecosystems and local residents. This needs to be changed. To be sustainable, tourism development must take cognisance of the regional ecological limits. Demand-side management and integrated planning that mandate unified Tourism-Water-Waste Master Plans at the municipal level could be a beginning point. Visitor caps can be enforced based on the region’s carrying capacity.
Bhutan’s high-value, low-impact model, which collects sustainable development fees for reinvestment into conservation, cultural preservation, and community funds, is a good example for the Himalayan states. Simultaneously, destination rebranding to disperse tourists across different tourist trails or circuits and across seasons could also ease the time compression. Resilience must become a critical component of the tourism agenda for the Himalayan region.
Soma Sarkar is an Associate Fellow with the Urban Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.
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Soma Sarkar is an Associate Fellow with ORF’s Urban Studies Programme. Her research interests span the intersections of environment and development, urban studies, water governance, Water, ...
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