Footprints on the Mountainside

Yeah, I’ve been missing from here for a long time. Too much happening in real life. My work at resonate, then my work with Wide Aware, some training for trainers I’ve been in the process of organizing….

Now, Wide Aware is in the process of designing a three day training programme for activity instructors in the outdoors. The current scenario with instructors is that there is no specific training that they undergo. Some instructors do the mountaineering courses in an effort to get some skills, but they are not particularly relevant to taking groups into the outdoors.

As a result, there are a lot of hit or miss processes.

This programme we are planning is a three day initiative designed specially for instructors who use outdoor adventure activities to support experiential learning objectives. While the course is still being designed, some of the intended content includes:

• How to handle activities
• How to execute programmes
• Handling ropes
• Belay systems
• Sequencing activities for optimal design
• Ratio of instructors to participants for various kinds of programmes
• Attitudes toward participant management
• Strategies and skills for working with different age groups
• Participant observation, interaction and guidance
• Risk management

Other possibilities being considered are orienteering, first aid, and some other subjects.

This programme is not intended to develop facilitation or training related skills, but restricts its scope toward activities in the outdoors and the role of the instructor conducting them.

The programme is planned for November at the YMCA campsite at Mulshi.

This programme is well suited for anyone who would like to develop skills for working with groups and conducting activities in the outdoors. Feel free to comment here with your feedback or if you would like to be informed when the final dates are announced.

The Tourism ministry insists that they want to promote adventure tourism in India. Like cultural tourism, etc. Basically what they want is more tourists.

There are fancy initiatives and Incredible India and what-nots. Yet, how much attention is paid to actually facilitating tourism? How much attention is paid to ensure that the tourists come? Sure, tourists come. India has been a hotspot for travellers for thousands of years. But, if we want more, what do we do to ensure that the people who we invite are able to come and have a good experience?

What we have in the name of tourism is fancy packages. Sure. That is one element of tourism. Yet, somewhere down the line, we forget that we are actually inviting people to experience the country. We have invited them. They are our guests.

Seth Godin shared an experience in a visa office and talks about several, really easy to manage things that could make the experience more inviting. Not just inviting, it could translate into better revenue from more tourists, convenient airline bookings, welcoming interaction…. I can empathise with this post so much. How many of us really enjoy conversing with a person behind thick glass, waiting in a place with inadequate seating that is in disrepair……. would we want to do business with such people? Perhaps…. if we needed the product. But tourism is not a need. It is a dream we are selling. Could selling dreams become more interesting in a condusive environment that says we are interested in you?

When I set up Wide Aware, I had a talk with my CA, who needed to know the nature of business for figuring out tax and things. It was a rude awakening to know that the Tourism Ministry’s invite for people to provide adventure services hasn’t made it to the Tax Office. There IS no category for adventure services. It was a pain figuring out “what we were”. We are not travel agents, we do training, but we are not consultants - we do outbound training and fun programmes as well, We do outdoor education, but we are not an educational institution…….. If the memo had made the journey to the  Tax office, it would be a simple matter of “adventure services”. So, we want to promote adventure tourism, but of course, there is no adventure service provider in India. Really! Please bring your own rafting guide with you. We have the rivers. And yeah, travel agents conduct wildlife tours.

Rafting reminds me…. the river rafting that we do uses water from the dam at Bhire for the rapids. There have been numerous attempts over the years to try and bring some kind of predictability to it, so that the adventure tourism that the tourism ministry wants can happen. Nah! The dam officials don’t work in the tourism ministry, therefore it is not their problem. Thus, there is no way of knowing if water will be available, or you refund your bookings until the rafting run starts. Granted, the water is released almost everyday, but try explaining to a tourist waiting with gear ready that “oops! You get a refund - remember the cancellation clause that refers to events beyond our control?”

Last year, Amita wrote about a similar problem she had with Brightlands resort in Matheran. The hotel had overbooked, and she didn’t get the room she had booked. She took a refund, and when she called up the hotel owner, he told her that refunds were against their policy!!! There needs to be some kind of a regulation for this. I am not speaking of consumer courts, but enough issues in consumer courts reflecting in your licence.

There are tourists, there are locations, there are providers. What needs to be done is making that confluence easy and enjoyable.

I saw Charu sir on TV!!! He is on the Army escorted civilian team. The first goup of civilian trekkers on Siachen left on the 19th September as planned, even as we were wondering if Pakistan’s opposition would cause it to be canceled.

From next year, I bet we will be looking at the same rush of people heading to Siachen that once hit Ladakh and Spiti. I only hope that in that frozen environment, where not much is going to degrade, waste management policies are applied and enforced from the start, as with strict rules to prevent damage to the natural resources of the region.

Though, I guess anything will be better than war.

Read more

I think this is a rant, but I’m not sure yet what direction it will take as I write.

We were casually chatting with a friend/free lance instructor with us, and he was telling us of his experience with another group of tour operators he was hired to work with. He is a good outbound instructor, and experienced, but he still doesn’t handle groups on his own when he works with us. Reason being, we aren’t sure of his instincts in an emergency.

And the incident he told us about reinforced it. Let us call him “Raju” for now.

Raju had no bookings for a particular day, and was hired by a new “adventure sports company” in Mumbai. Well, when you’re a free lancer, you take what comes along. Heck, when you’re a business owner, you still mostly take what comes along.

Raju lands up on the location for the programme, and discovers that he is the only experienced instructor there. Well…. he has confidence in his abilities, so…. he’s ok with that. Then, he discovers that it is a group of 40 people and throws a fit. How is a person to handle rappelling for 40 people solo in a 4 hour morning session? The owner hurried to assure him that he had some experience and would help.

Well… when you’re thrown in the water, you swim. Raju begins to set up the rappelling and discovers insufficient equipment. He is encouraged to “adjust”. Great. He adjusts, and changes the site of the rappel as well, so that the length is shorter. Then comes the parade. One participant after another. Owner apparently is clueless about putting on the harnesses he himself owns. Raju teaches him. Very late into the day, they still have about 10 people left. Lunch time is long past.

Participants are bored from sitting while one person at a time does the rappelling. They are hot, hungry, and very irritated, because their promised 100ft rappel is now 40ft. At the end of the day, there are complaints about how Raju is slow. And the bottom line is that these guys are extremely lucky that no one died, but of course, no one there realizes that.

As far as I am concerned, Raju is NEVER going to be a chief instructor at Wide Aware. If my chief instructor can’t have the guts to cancel an activity when there is a shortage of resources - both human and equipment wise, I’m not interested. If I wanted yes men, I would hire yes men. I don’t. I want an instructor to speak up and make a stand when security is compromized.

Of course, such a situation wouldn’t come up with Wide Aware in the first place. We maintain a minimum of a 10 participants to one instructor ratio on our programmes, and it works well. I’m not planning on changing that. I’m hiring a vehicle for transport anyway, so where is the point in being stingy with equipment? If its not needed, it can sit around and come back untouched. Raka would throw a fit if he were expected to handle rappelling or climbing without a rope of adequate length sitting around anchored and unused for use in an emergency. And honestly, I wouldn’t expect him to adjust on that either.

What would I or Raka have done in the place of Raju? To begin with, we would have booked instructors and carried the equipment needed for that group size. If something went wrong, and we ended up being without equipment, we would have cancelled the activity and done something else that could be managed safely in the resources we had. Non-negotiable. I don’t care if I don’t get paid or have to issue a refund when the option is putting clients in danger.

When we do our mad cap adventures, we are experienced and know what we are getting into. Clients are paying us to know that for them, and we KNOW that if they had the experience, they wouldn’t be paying us. I think this is cheating and endangering the client.

Why does anyone want to make such a great profit, or offer services at such a competitive rate, that there is no basic infrastructure offered?

The ministry of tourism is making efforts to regualate adventure tourism, but unfortunately, there is nothing yet about rock climbing and rappelling below 6000m. Is there a rule that says climbing accidents don’t happen below 6000m?

But still, I recommend that that moronic operator read this link. One climbing accident is going to make all our clients leery, and honestly, there are less climbing accidents than road accidents, but that hasn’t factored in potential stupidity. It takes one.

Call me paranoid, but I’m actually seriously reconsidering hiring this Raju at all, if he finds it ok to operate under those circumstances. Will he speak up about any problem he sees, or simply shrug it away thinking it is better than “that” company anyway? I don’t even see that company as a comparison, and I have made it clear to him, but I’m going to be keeping a very close eye on the guy for the next forever, until I find him being more assertive.

I see this as his fault entirely, as the only guy around who knew the game, and allowed that huge risk to happen.

Just coming back from a successful training programme. This one was for a bunch of new recruits in an upcoming software company. This was one of the most bizarre programmes I ever conducted, yet, it was satisfying in a very meaningful way.

The participants were fresh from college, and had a lot of ideals, but very little idea of what working is all about. Chaos ruled, and initially, it took some time to get them to believe that outbound training programmes are not office picnics or perks, but the company actually expected them to be learning something out here.

There was a time when I was willing to write the programme off as a disaster.

We took off in fits and starts. Somewhere down the line, the whole thing clicked in place, when we were discussing happenings in an activity that required a lot of perseverance and their
performance was a dismal failure. Something happened in that group. All of a sudden, there was an awareness that here was something important going on.

The tempo picked, and at the end of the three days, I can say that this was one of the programmes where we were able to acheive a lot of constructive change among the participants. It is probably not even close to some of the outstanding programmes if discipline and performance in activities is to be considered, but if we see the magnitude of change we went through, this one has me thoroughly humbled.

Shows that even trainers have a lot to learn from their own experiences.