In March last year, 26-year-old Sonal Agostraa ventured far from the comforts of her New Delhi home to the bone-chilling climes of the South Pole as part of the Antarctica Treaty Expedition 2013 led by polar explorer and environmentalist Robert Swan. For two weeks, she was part of this expedition, with temperatures dropping well below freezing. At a time when her peers were considering far more comfortable holidays, the techie was instead looking for a heady dose of adventure.
For a country brought up on a staple of package tours and holidays back to the home town, the opportunity to try something new is being grabbed with open hands. Not everyone is going as far as Agostraa; some are taking baby steps with a three- or four-day break from Delhi to Rishikesh and throwing in some adventure sports such as rapelling and white water rafting into the mix. Others are going the whole hog — from four-wheel self-drive expeditions in and around the Zambezi river in Africa to skiing holidays in the depths of Nordic wilderness to watch the Northern Lights.
Way to Go
For adventure tour operators, this growth has come the hard way. Until the middle of last year — especially after the floods in Uttarakhand washed away half the business in the region — these firms had been staring at a bleak future. Scores of schools, corporates and individual travellers scratched anything to do with rivers and adventure and opted for safer options. For the past few months, however, the cheer seems to have returned, as people have flocked back to some old haunts like Rishikesh and discovered new ones such as the Kunalika river near Kolad in Maharashtra — which has gone from undiscovered wilderness to white water rafting magnet that draws some 4,000 people a week.
Despite this seeming growth in the industry, adventure tourism remains a relatively small market, compared to the West. According to a survey by The George Washington University and The Adventure Travel Trade Association, the global market is estimated at $89 billion (around Rs 5,34,000 crore). While there are no published reports for India, industry estimates peg it at no more than Rs 500-600 crore.
In the past five or six years there have been a few changes that have seen the industry almost double in size. According to tour operators, the most important shift has been the willingness of Indians to look beyond their usual list of holidays to a new experience. In turn, this has been backed by the tourist infrastructure expanding in some popular places like Rishikesh, Ladakh and Uttarakhand’s Valley of Flowers. As people have become more comfortable with the idea of adventure travel (especially with regards to roughing it out and prickly issues of safety and security) newer options within India and outside have opened up.
Thrill-seekers are Here
However, operators in the adventure tour space think that India may just be getting started in this space. “There is plenty of potential in India,” says Ajeet Bajaj, founder of Snow Leopard Adventures, one of India’s top tour operators in this category. Some initiatives — such as the 777 days of Indian Himalayas by the Union Ministry of Tourism — point to the potential here. “India has 73% of the Himalayas, but our neighbours seem to get all the adventure tourism traffic,” he points out. Besides exploiting the adventure tourism potential in the Himalayas, there’s much more that can be explored in India, he contends. “Once they try out one adventure, people realize how much fun it can be and what they are missing,” Bajaj says.
In Bangalore, Santosh Kumar has been promoting adventure tours since 1999 with his quirkily named outfit GetOffUrAss. What started with a few expeditions to the Western Ghats has expanded rapidly in the past decade-and-a-half. In 2010, his firm was taken over by Travel Tours, another tourism firm in India’s IT capital. Kumar has been quick to cash in on the potential in this space, adding tours to north and central India, distant Ladakh and even Cambodia to his roster. “Adventure tourism is better packaged today and people have many more options and operators to choose from,” says Kumar. “People are making hobbies out of their adventures.” Akshay Kumar, president of the Adventure Tour Operators Association of India (ATOAI), says the industry has got back on its feet quickly after the disaster in Uttarakhand and is raring to go. “People want to tick off items on their bucket list,” he says.
“Adventure tours are often at the top of the list.” As they seek to do more trips, they are splitting up their holidays into smaller experiential vacations, he adds, opting to try a new experience and location each time around. So, someone who goes to Rishikesh and does a white water rafting holiday one time, may head to Ladakh for a trek the next time around. Then, Kumar discloses, there is the emergence of the hardcore (and well-heeled) outbound traveller, who is hungry for edge-of-the-seat adventures, across Greenland or deep in the jungles of Africa or anywhere they can get their adrenaline fix. Tour operators say that Indians today are increasingly well-travelled and knowledgeable.
They have read about, watched or been part of adventure activities on their tours and want to relive some of these experiences. “People are bored of going to the hills and mountains and staying in hotels in Shimla and watching the might of the Himalayas from a distance,” says Rajesh Ojha, founder of Banjara Camps, a two decade-old provider of adventure tours. “There is an increasing focus on experiential adventure tourism, even if it is a softer two- or three-day holiday.” Ojha says that surprisingly it is families who are driving this discovery of adventure tours and activities, by demanding more of their vacations.
 Corporates Step In
The Mahindra Group, the $16-billion conglomerate that is arguably best known for its rugged utility vehicles (UVs), is also benefitting from this thirst for adventure. It started Great Escape in 1996 to give owners of Mahindra vehicles a taste of off-roading with their own vehicles. Three years ago, the group decided it wanted to own the adventure space, says Bijoy Kumar, chief of Adventure Initiatives at M&M. To do this, the company decided to not rely on people bringing in their own vehicles — it instead offered a fleet of its own UVs to adventure seekers.
It started with around 30 to 40 UVs and today has 88 vehicles being driven across half-a-dozen routes from the spice plantations of Karnataka to the Himalayas. “We wanted people to discover and push their own limits,” says Kumar. Using social media to spread the word (it has some 1.4 million fans for the Great Escape on Facebook), M&M has been able to get some 3,000 people on these drives and even has an academy in place to help drivers refine their offroading skills.
The other reason for adventure tourism’s growth is that it can suit every budget. At the very top of the heap, a run to the South Pole will cost you around $12,000 (approximately Rs 7.2 lakh) a person. Then other adventures in the African wild or in South America can also seriously dent your bank balance — anything upwards of Rs 2 lakh a person, depending on what you want to do and how long you holiday. However, there are cheaper options too: a three-day weekend adventure from Mumbai or Delhi (with a spot of rafting or a bungee jump thrown in) can be far cheaper — as little as Rs 5,000 per person.
There are other signs that Indians are lapping up adventure in all shapes and sizes. Woodland, initially known as a provider of tough footwear for outdoor activities, has entered into allied areas such as tents, hiking sticks, harnesses, outdoor cameras and sleeping bags.
“We will test some of our products at our stores and then make them available online,” says Harkirat Singh, CEO of Woodland. “We see growth of adventure activities now extending to people in non-metro towns too.” Woodland is hardly the only gearmaker to see rapid growth in the past few years (the company claims it is growing at 25% annually). In Bangalore, Wildcraft closed a $10-million investment from marquee VC Sequoia Capital in December last year. The adventure-gear firm has grown from revenues of Rs 1 crore around six or seven years ago to over Rs 40 crore today. Using its funding, it plans to triple its manufacturing capacity and expand its retail reach.
Caught in a Whirlpool
In India, the potential for tourism is slowed by numerous pitfalls. Tour operators complain that there are few safety standards in place and ATOAI, the industry lobby, itself has formulated its own guidelines and is pushing individual states to make them mandatory.
In their absence, unscrupulous operators flourish; in Rishikesh, for example, the lack of any clear safety norms has helped shoddy raft operators thrive. These operators undercut organized ones by offering cheaper rides: Rs 150 as opposed to Rs 650 charged by the organized operators. Crooked operators tend to use substandard equipment and flout rules such as not having back-up crafts.
Then, India’s unwillingness to permit satellite phones, a standard safety requirement in the boondocks, is under a regulatory cloud. India’s spotty record with women’s safety and preservation of the environment too isn’t doing this sector any favours.
As adventurous Indians queue up for their next escapade, these niggles will need to be sorted out quickly, lest their journey ends up a damp squib.
Adventure tourism business booms in India; but many pitfalls need to be addressed
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