The true grit of nomadic entrepreneur running all-women travel company
Indefatigable spirit of Chorol Thinlas, 45, running an all-women travel company in Ladakh raised nearly half a million ready money even in throes of lockdown through crowdsourcing with her idea of using her women workforce to clean up mountain’s plastic garbage.
Thinlas’s foray into the mountains began as a five-year-old accompanying her father on long treks through the mountains with their goats and sheep. Entrepreneur and writer from Ladakh, India founded the Ladakhi Women’s Travel Company in 2009 and has also written articles on tourism in Ladakh and other issues.
She first came into recognition of tourists and locals in her twenties when she started working as a trekking guide in the otherwise heavily male-dominated trekking industry in most rugged terrains of northern India. Her company hires and trains local women guides and hosts guests at homestays chiefly those tun by women.
During the lockdown when Ladakh was completely shut for tourists for almost 2 years, till Nov 2021, the socio-economic impact was perilous for locals depending upon the tourism, particularly women-owned small businesses.
Chorol devised a plan to use the time of distress into a productive one so that she can help her women employees sustain their livelihood in tough times as many of her staff members are the sole bread earners of the family. So she launched a crowdsourced campaign wemakeit in the summer of 2020 to clean up the mountain garbage along trekking routes, which is not much time raised nearly 5 lac.
It might take 2-3 years for the global tourism industry to recover fully but Choral thinks pushing her female guides to foster their own creativity any hardship can be tackled.
