RiverIndia.com Bamboo Eco-Lodge River Trips on the Siang River
This entry has been selected as a finalist in the
Geotourism Challenge 2009: Power of Place - Sustaining the Future of Destinations competition.
RiverIndia's bamboo eco-lodge in Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh has provided the basis for our operations since 2005. Working in cooperation with a local tribal family, we built a bamboo safari lodge that serves as a model for future eco-tourism operators. With an emphasis on ecological conservation and providing jobs in a region of high unemployment, the lodge also serves as a base for RiverIndia's SARSI school- a free river skills training for interested locals that teaches skills from guiding and rowing, to leave-no-trace ethics and food-handling. We actively encourage students and employees alike to start their own rafting companies, and even provide equipment procurement assistance, ...
About You
Contact Information
Title
Mr.
First name
Roland
Last name
Stevenson
Your job title
Owner
Name of your organization
RiverIndia
Organization type
business
Annual budget/currency
20,000/USD
Mailing address
333 NW 4th Ave #1211
Telephone number
541-499-5160
Postal/Zip Code
97209
Country
United States
Website
Email address
Alternative email address
Your idea
This will be the address used to plot your entry on the map.
Street Address
Tebo Village
City
Pasighat
State/Province
Arunachal Pradesh
Postal/Zip Code
Country
India
Geotourism Challenge Addressed by Entrant
Quality of tourist experience and educational benefit to tourists , Quality of benefit to residents for the destination , Quality of tourism management by destination leadership , Quality of stewardship of the destination.
Organization size
Small (1 to 100 employees)
Indicate sector in which you principally work
Tourism-related business
Year innovation began
2005
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Indicate sector in which you principally work
Adventure, Education.
Name Your Project
RiverIndia.com Bamboo Eco-Lodge River Trips on the Siang River
Describe Your Idea
RiverIndia's bamboo eco-lodge in Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh has provided the basis for our operations since 2005. Working in cooperation with a local tribal family, we built a bamboo safari lodge that serves as a model for future eco-tourism operators. With an emphasis on ecological conservation and providing jobs in a region of high unemployment, the lodge also serves as a base for RiverIndia's SARSI school- a free river skills training for interested locals that teaches skills from guiding and rowing, to leave-no-trace ethics and food-handling. We actively encourage students and employees alike to start their own rafting companies, and even provide equipment procurement assistance, ...
Innovation
What is the goal of your innovation? Please describe in one sentence the kind of impact, change, or reform your approach is intended to achieve.
Protecting the Siang River from reckless development and damming by building a river tourism industry and empowering a community of people who rely financially on the river's health.
Please write an overview of your project. Include how your approach supports or embodies geotourism or destination stewardship. This text will appear when people scroll over the icon for your entry on the map located on the competition homepage.
RiverIndia's bamboo eco-lodge in Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh has provided the basis for our operations since 2005. Working in cooperation with a local tribal family, we built a bamboo safari lodge that serves as a model for future eco-tourism operators. With an emphasis on ecological conservation and providing jobs in a region of high unemployment, the lodge also serves as a base for RiverIndia's SARSI school- a free river skills training for interested locals that teaches skills from guiding and rowing, to leave-no-trace ethics and food-handling. We actively encourage students and employees alike to start their own rafting companies, and even provide equipment procurement assistance, all with the goal of building a community thousands strong who are interested in keeping the river free-flowing and healthy.
Explain in detail why your approach is innovative
We are the first people ever to start a rafting company in Arunachal Pradesh- a state that was opened to foreigners less than a decade ago. We've been active in promoting the easing of restrictions against foreign visitors, and this year successfully encouraged the government to triple the length of the Restricted Area Permits required to enter the state. With our lodge we could have copied the standard model in India: build a large, cheap concrete hotel. Instead we've emphasized traditional tribal bamboo construction methods, conscious that that will promote pride in culture and encourage authentic "tribal tourism". Our school is the first of its kind, and offers free tuition to students by combining school with small commercial trips where guests are aware of the educational-emphasis underway. This allows guests to participate, interact, and build relationships with students. We encourage students to start their own companies, and even assist them with this process. In the future we plan to offer small grants and micro-loans. We understand that the best way to build a unified voice is by creating an economically vested interest of conservation-minded rafting and tour companies.
Impact
Describe the degree of success you have had to date. How do you measure, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the impact on sustainability or enhancement of local culture, environment, heritage, or aesthetics? How has it transformed or contributed to the power of place or demonstrated the sustainability of tourism? How does your approach minimize negative impacts?
Over the past four years, we have created jobs for 10 previously unemployed locals and provided inspiration for dozens of others. Tourists were viewed with skepticism at first, primarily because they were foreign expeditions who visited, rafted, and departed. We have transformed this dynamic by involving the local populace, creating jobs, and recently conducting a "first descent" of one of the largest rapids on the river by a team of only-local paddlers. This generated a strong sense of pride and ownership- that the river was Arunachali rather than foreign. This is just one example of how we enhance the local culture. We measure our success by the feedback we get from our clients, by the media exposure we receive, by how many students we are able to train, and how many jobs we are able to create. With every new expedition we run, we are able to train another representative of the river who, as a guide leader, will pass on naturalist knowledge and conservation ideals to another generation of paddlers and citizens.
In what ways are local residents actively involved in your work, including participation and community input? How has the community responded to or benefited from your approach?
We employ and train cooks, drivers, equipment managers, and most importantly guides almost all of whom have heard about us through and hail from the local community. Our guide schools are aimed at building whitewater rafting, kayaking, and fishing as an industry, and we encourage and support other leaders in the community in their plans for joining the industry. As an advocate for the adventure sports industry, we represent a rafting interest in the government's tourism meetings and are considered the state's experts on the subject. We have helped to train the local police force in swiftwater-rescue techniques that can be used in the case of flooding- which the state experiences every year during the monsoons. We've received thanks for this participation from local community members and the state government.
How does your program promote traveler enthusiasm, satisfaction, and engagement with the locale?
Ultimately, we are in a business to run amazing whitewater rafting, kayaking, and fishing expeditions. Our guests are often so enthused and satisfied with the destination that they return the following year. Our fishing trips are a great example: after promoting catch and release Mahaseer fishing on a "last decent" of the Subansiri River (before it was dammed this past fall), our fishing group decided they would come back to the Siang River the following year. With a conservation minded theme to their trip they were enthusiastic about returning and making a difference the following year.
Describe how your work helps travelers and local residents better understand the value of the area's cultural and natural heritage, and educates them on local environmental issues.
We've conducted 3 years worth of custom kayaking expeditions with a group of professional whitewater kayakers sponsored by Jackson Kayak, Dagger, and Red Bull. These trips have not only promoted enthusiasm with the participants, they have also been shared with thousands of others through the production of documentaries ("The Last Descent"- Nevada City Environmental Film Festival viewer's choice winner), national promo-tours, and kayaking DVDs. Separately, our charity guide school, SARSI, emphasizes environmental issues to local residents. We discuss issues such as damming, proper waste disposal, the value of cultural immersion and intercultural dialogue. We prove the value of intercultural experience by running successful expeditions as a team of Arunachali guides and a mix of Indian and foreign paddlers. We share the issues we've learned about with our guests, who then share them with others when they return home.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How is your initiative currently financed? If available, provide information on your finances and organization that could help others. Please list: Annual budget, annual revenue generated, size of part-time, full-time and volunteer staff.
RiverIndia.com finances the SARSI school with the profits of its commercial expeditions. It runs the SARSI school by combining it with a commercial trip where paying guests are invited to participate by preparing an educational talk on a ecological subject of their interest. The budget for each trip is around $8,000. We currently compress our operations to 4 months out of the year, though the season will ultimately grow to an 8-month season. Our staff on each trip is 6-8. We have 2 full-time staff and occasionally have volunteer staff who join trips at a discount.
Is your initiative financially and organizationally sustainable? If not, what is required to make it so? Is there a potential demand for your innovation?
Yes- we have been in operation for 4 years now.
What are the main barriers you encounter in managing, implementing, or replicating your innovation? What barriers keep your program from having greater impact?
Convincing people that this really is a phenomenal whitewater and adventure tourism destination. Once people come on our trips, they're thoroughly convinced but promoting the region to your average American, German, even India has been a challenge. We have good support within the community and even in the tourism department for the project and school's implementation. The program could have greater impact by expanding satelite operations on other rivers throughout India, or offering schools more regularly. We have a talented manager in India, Nino Dai, who does a great job of managing the details of the operation.
What is your plan to expand or further develop your approach? Please indicate where/how you would like to grow or enhance your innovation, or have others do so.
We plan to expand the rafting, kayaking, and fishing season to the full potential 8 months. The build-up of business and infrastructure takes time, though. In addition, we plan to offer three RiverIndia.com bamboo eco-lodges in the towns of Pasighat, Yingkiong, and Tuting. These towns would provide ideal settings for a culturally immersive experiences and would be able to offer lodgings to visitors outside of the rafting guests on our trips. These lodges have multiple activities associated with their locations: tea plantations, horse-riding, mountain trekking, and Khampa Buddhist cultural tours. Tuting is within 10 miles of the Tibetan border and currently neither Tuting nor Yingkiong have adequate facilities for our guests. We camp by the riverside near these towns, but hope to offer classy cultural bamboo-hut lodges to stay at soon.
The Story
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers' marketing material.
Roland Stevenson was raised in Germany, Italy, Botswana, India, and Pakistan while his parents worked in the foreign service. Before the age of 18 he had lived in south asia for 7 years and then spent most of his time in college devising ways to return to South Asia. After working as a river guide for 10 years in California and on the Grand Canyon, and receiving a masters in physics, Roland moved to India with the goal of starting a rafting company on a legendary, trans-Himalayan river: the lower Yarlung Tsang-Po, or Siang as it is known in Arunachal Pradesh. Roland arranged sponsorship from the US and invested his savings to ship a container of equipment from Oakland to Calcutta. He now spends 4-6 months in India every year running custom, small-group whitewater rafting, kayaking, and fishing expeditions through RiverIndia.com and teaches a free charity guide school for interested locals called SARSI- the South Asian River Skills Institute.
What is the origin of your innovation? Tell the Changemakers and media communities what prompted you to start this initiative.
Roland Stevenson traveled to the Siang River in the fall of 2005, first in the back of a dusty jeep with 4 Nepalis, then on a 2-day train ride, then alone on a local bus with a police escort- few foreigners had been there before. He had no permit to enter, but mailed the state's tourism director with news that he was coming to Arunachal and wanted to start a rafting company on the Siang River. He was greeted by an enthusiastic representative and taken on a tour of a state that holds the second largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the world (after Lhasa) and one of the world's greatest whitewater destinations- the Siang River. In meetings with administrators and locals over 2 weeks, one theme was clear: "We want to promote tourism, but we are losing our culture". Unfortunately, another theme was also apparent: the locals were lacking education in environmental conservation- evidenced by a celebratory tour dinner in which trash was thrown directly into the Siang River! RiverIndia was started to encourage culturally-immersive whitewater rafting, kayaking, and fishing expeditions that emphasize the ecological protection of the rivers we work on.
Describe some unique tourist experiences that your approach provides. Be specific; give illustrative examples.
A foreigner who visits the Siang River is one of less than 200 outsiders to visit the state each year. Guests enjoy meeting villagers who have never seen a foreigner before, or eating local delicacies such as boiled rat or deer-intestine soup (optional!). While the whitewater on the Siang is some of the largest in the world, our clients often remark that their favorite memories were of gathering around a fire in a traditional local bamboo hut- a meal of bamboo grilled ginger chicken on a banana leaf washed down with rice-beer brewed in bamboo. That all utensils are biodegradable is remarkable. We usually sing Nepali songs, clapping, and dancing the night away- all in a hut, in a rice paddy, in the middle of a starlit Siang River Gorge. It's magical and very unique! We hope to expand these minimally invasive bamboo hut lodges throughout the Siang River Corridor.
What types of partnerships or professional development would be most beneficial in spreading your innovation?
Partnerships with organizations that can help fund or donate equipment to our guide schools and river conservation efforts. Organizations that can help with destination marketing and increasing exposure of a new tourism destination. Organizations that can provide expertise, teaching, and training in building tourism that preserves the region's traditional cultures.
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 | 162 weeks ago Anoop Rao said: i intend to travell here.thanks for your post. about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 195 weeks ago surabhi pandey said: Greetings to all interested and the creative I have many ideas useful for all people derived from nature and help the nature .I want ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 195 weeks ago surabhi pandey said: hello dear /Mr. Roland Stevenson You are agree with me in many things, thank you ---------- i am mohamed from libya ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 198 weeks ago Roland Stevenson said: As your comments imply, our goal in north-east India is to build a thriving locally-based tourism industry that depends on a healthy ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 198 weeks ago Bihamba Jemimah said: On July 1, 2009 the judges reviewed the entries for the Changemakers “Geotourism Challenge 2009: Power of Place Sustaining the Future of ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 199 weeks ago Lady Rodriguez said: Hacemos llegar nuestros votos de un feliz logro de éste proyecto. Felicitaciones!! Lady ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 200 weeks ago Roland Stevenson said: Thank you! Your votes, support, and positive encouragement means so much to us! about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 200 weeks ago Roland Stevenson said: Our first expeditions were some of our favorite: the sense of exploration and remoteness were unparalleled, and the guests on our trips ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 200 weeks ago Nancy Plant said: Praise seems inadequate. What you have done & continue to do are absolutely inspirational. about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 200 weeks ago ninamma rai said: great work! about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
