Preserving habitats

How a tribal encounter led to the setting up of an innovative eco-tourism project?

Some journeys end in new beginnings. For Samar Jodha, well-known photographer, and Carin Fischer, a German national and erstwhile lawyer in Washington DC, the decision to drive down Stillwell Road from Kunming in China to Ledo in Assam in the fall of 2004, was to lead to many beginnings "" professionally and personally.

Of course, they couldn't complete the journey: they were turned away by the Burmese authorities within shouting distance of India.

But it was on the India side of the road that their real adventure lay. "A P J Baruah, the SP of the area, had made ar-rangements for us to visit some villages along the Stillwell road," narrates Fischer, reliving her sense of discovery.

"We went to Phaneng on the last day of the trip "" it was almost evening when we reached, to a traditional welcome from the Tai Phake tribals. Set in the very lap of nature, it was so quiet and peaceful. It helped that the nephew of the tribal head knew English and took us through the customs and history."

Utterly charmed by their hospitality, Fischer says the poor tribespeople were very much on her mind even after she came back to Delhi. After all, there were only 1,500 Tai Phakes remaining, and their habitat too was threatened by the environment degradation caused by the open-cast coal mines nearby.

The opportunity to go back came her way the following year when she and Jodha were invited to the Dehing-Phatkai tribal festival. It's then that she floated the idea of developing eco-tourism in the area to the assembled headmen, as a public-private partnership between the government, a corporate house operating in the region and with CSR funds to spare, and the tribals themselves.

The Tai-Phake volunteered to lend their village to the project and Fischer came back to the capital to draw up plans and, most important, arrange funding.

"It's around this time that I got an assignment with Premier Oil to help build community relations in Assam. It was providence," says Fischer.

Construction on the eco-huts began in late 2005, with the company providing the funding, training in hygiene and medicine, and supervision, the Assam government's joint forest management progamme giving solar lamps and training in conservation activities, and the villagers coming in with the land and labour.

The total costs incurred: Rs 3.05 lakh on the building materials and furniture, and Rs 2.38 lakh on the Western-style toilets, the only concession made for tourists.

For the first batch of tourists who came on time for the 2006 Dehing-Phatke festival, Fischer says, she researched all over, looking for people who would have a historical reason to come to Phaneng, and invited them.

So there was an American whose father was one of the engineers who helped build the road, a Britisher whose father had died nearby, and so on. It worked and especially with tourists who were on the lookout for where cellphones wouldn't work and they could immerse themselves in endangered ethnographies.

Hearteningly, this breed doesn't mind paying handsomely for an authentic experience, not even the Rs 6,000 a night that the Phaneng eco-lodge charges. "They are paying to preserve the environment," Fisher says.

In this first year of being around, Phaneng has already earned Rs 12 lakh, 100 villagers have benefitted directly. No wonder in nearby Katatong the Singpho tribals are constructing an eco-lodge and in nearby Arunachal Pradesh, Fischer hopes another one will come up to complete the tribal circuit.

Lately, of course, Fischer has been busy elsewhere in Jammu and Kashmir, Gulmarg actually, where the state government would like her to replicate her eco-tourism model, centred around skiing this time.

But it's not just Fischer who's had a life-changing experience in Phaneng "" Jodha (they're married now and the ceremony took place in a Tai Phake hut) too has been touched. Later this year Jodha will be showing some of the photographs he's taken of the Tai Phake.

The past three years, says Jodha, have been a process of reinvention, artistically. "I've done a lot of social communications work previously too, but one always balanced it with commercial work...for financial reasons, perhaps."

But these days, he's cutting down the commerical work, concentrating instead on working according to his convictions, and being honest to his art. He hopes his exhibition, around 12-15 black and white pictures of tribal faces blown up 6"x5" and placed in a darkened gallery, will make people think. There won't be any prints for sale, or catalogues, only some large-format portfolios, and the proceeds will go to Phaneng.

The couple now owns a hut in Phaneng, and Fischer says, "For the first time what I have been doing professionally has merged with my interest in art and with what Samar has been doing."

Some journeys end in lovers meeting.