Every year, as pilgrims and trekkers visit Himachal Pradesh’s high-altitude trails, the mountains silently absorb the weight of human presence.

When the snow melts and the festivals are over, it reveals more than alpine meadows and sacred landscapes. Discarded plastic, food wrappers, clothes, and abandoned gear surface along fragile routes, turning places of spiritual and ecological significance into unintended dumping grounds.

As visitor footfall increases, the burden on these Himalayan ecosystems grows heavier.

For RP Negi Yullam, Founder of the Himalayn Tribe Foundation, the problem became impossible to ignore during his early visits to places like Shrikhand Mahadev and Kinnaur Kailash.

He saw plastic buried under snow, offerings left behind, and no system to carry waste back.

That raised a question: if these are places that people choose to walk through for pilgrimage and adventure, could they also become part of the effort to protect them?

It was within this intersection of travel, faith and environmental strain that the Himalayn Tribe Foundation emerged as a grassroots collective working to restore, protect, preserve and reimagine how people move through some of the Indian Himalayas’ most sensitive pilgrimage and trekking corridors.

The moment that started it

“Himalayn Tribe Foundation’s work had to exist because the Himalayas were silently paying the price of devotion and adventure,” says RP Negi Yullam.

“During early visits to places like Shrikhand Mahadev and Kinnaur Kailash, I saw plastic buried under snow, offerings left behind, and no system to carry waste back. That moment made it clear that authorities alone cannot protect such remote terrains. Those who walk these sacred and fragile routes must also take responsibility.”

The surge in pilgrimage and trekking footfall has brought with it an accumulation of waste that fragile ecosystems are ill-equipped to manage. These trails are not just environmentally significant; they also hold strong cultural and spiritual meaning for local communities.

For RP Negi, that made involving the people who travel through these landscapes particularly important.

“People who trek or go on pilgrimage directly interact with the ecosystem. When conservation is led by those who walk these trails, the connection becomes personal, not instructional,” he explains.

“At high altitudes, even a small wrapper can remain for decades. When travellers participate in cleanups, they don’t just remove waste — they return home with awareness. That behavioural shift is the strongest form of conservation.”

Instead of asking people to care, they got them involved

Himalayn Tribe Foundation is a grassroots organisation currently working in Himachal Pradesh to address environmental degradation,........

© The Better India