How Will Be Trekking After COVID-19

Impact of COVID-19 on Tourism:

Over the past few months, tourism businesses are worried about the situation after the post-COVID-19 pandemic. The Tourism industry already affected by the COVID-19 and it will not be going to get better any time soon. Many countries have considered the tourism industry a massive contributor to economic growth and over the past years, large investments have been made by private investors and government in its development. 

Most businesses are badly hit by COVID-19 are small businesses, are about to close and some are already closed due to this pandemic. Big tourism companies are not in any better shape they're also struggle with financial situations.

Trekking in India most likely to resume on a small level from September but a full recovery of the Indian tourism industry is expected in 2021. as per now, the tourism industry has lost unimaginable revenue just in few months. a report from the banking group UBS found that tourism revenues fell by 95% in Italy and 77% in Spain in March and Indian tourism is no in any good shape small tour agencies are about to shut down and some of are have been shut down just within 2 couple of months. 

When will Trekking Resume?

The answer to this question is September the earliest which can we think of. The resumption of Trekking is depended on a few situations.

• What will be the condition of the country in September?. We are not expecting COVID-19 free before September, but we have to consider if cases are the cases going down or up, to resume Trekking the number of cases should be less the few hundreds a day.
• Availability of transports, to resume the trekking, the train travels, air travel, and bus travels need to be as normal as it was before COVID-19. north region trekkers usually come to our treks by bus. from south 70% of our trekkers come by trains some of coming till Delhi by train and then took buses. 30% of our trekkers come by air travel and some of them also come to Delhi by air travel and take buses.
• Guidelines by Government authorities as of now no statement by tourism authorities have made about resumption time and date of tourism. if any case they provide time and date of resuming treks we have to follow those guidelines.

But as pandemic experts have told in there findings that we can expect a decrease in COVID-19 cases by September. And we also want to advise our trekkers to start to travel only in September. At the end of this article, we have given a list of treks which will be available from September to December.

If you've planes to go on trekking in July- August or already have booked trekkers we advise you to cancel those plans and bookings as of for now.

How Trekking will be Different from September or before COVID-19?

This is the question everyone is asking including us. In online survey conduct by Himalayan Trekker, we found out only 40% of people want to share cabs and tents. Our teams get together on Video calls to plan the treks from September. 

Trekking is a Social sport it takes out all the fun if we separate the trekkers. Maintaining a social distancing on the trek will affect the trekking organizations if the distance between trekkers increased the number of guides will go up and the cost of per trek will also increase. That means trekkers have to travel to the Base camp or the accommodations in shared cabs, they'll have to eat together and they have to share tents as well.

What we can do to ensure safety?

As you might assume that we will test trekkers for COVID-19 before and after the trek, but that's not possible because time is taken be test result to come and the cost of per test is expensive.

We will be Ensuring the following things: 

• Update or change the sanitation policies 
• You might have to carry your own Gears like sleeping bags (if you can otherwise they can also provide), Bedsheets, Cutlery. except for sleeping bags, we won't we providing you any other things.
• You will be in charge of your own sanitation. You have to sanitize their sleeping bags from day one to the last day.
• Our tents, Sleeping bags, dining tents, toilet tents, kitchen equipment will be sanitized after every group leave.
• We will provide you enough sanitization facilities to sanitize themselves and their gears.
• You will be asked to bring your medical certificate from doctors before you come to treks.
• If any of member from trekking group found to be higher body temperature than normal won't be allowed to go on the trek.

But, don't think these as final policies we have to wait till September and for government guidelines. These safety measures will be changing and maybe a few points might add to the list before September. All these guidelines will depend on the situation at that time.  

Will all trekkers can get back to Treks?

This is something we all need to understand even if we were able to start the treks, it will not be the same as it was before the march. Numbers of trekkers won't be able to get back to trekking. 

More than 80% of trekkers are from metro cities and who can be able to trek will depends on the COVID-19 situation according to their states. Trekkers from Less COVID-19 cases city will be able to start sooner than others.

A majority of trekkers are not full-time trekkers or mountaineers. 75% of trekkers are professional students and employees. Due to COVID-19 educational institutes, businesses, private companies have suffered from financial losses and time. As soon as things start getting normal businesses and educational institutes start working on building again what they have lost.

Educational Institutes will resume studies to cover the four months of student's loss of study. As soon as the situation gets normal most of our trekkers will go back to regular studies and they have to work harder to make up for their lost studies in four months.

Businesses have been suffering the most in these few months. Due to no productions and sales, they also want to recover as soon as possible to stay alive and organizations will try their hard to revive them. All our processional trekkers will be busy rebuilding their organizations. Due to this, there may be cuts on holiday vacations.

So, in conclusion - We are ready for trekking from September but it will be a whole new kind of trekking with less group size and new safety regulations. We can just hope everything gets normal as soon as it can be. As we are noticing that other countries are recovering and things getting normal for them.

It will take some time to resume travel at its full efficacy. 

And note that all these regulations are not yet finalized there can be few changes and add ups. You can also send us your suggestion and advice which can help us to keep you and others happy and safe.

Thank you.

Hope We have answered all your questions.

You can ask more Questions form me at anksyal49@gmail.com.