137 Open Peaks, Empty Slopes: India's Himalayan Throughput Problem

137 Open Peaks, Empty Slopes: India’s Himalayan Throughput Problem

In August 2019, the Government of India announced that it had opened 137 mountain peaks to foreign climbers and trekkers under the mountaineering visa. It was described, fairly, as a historic step for adventure tourism. Several seasons later, the country’s most accomplished mountaineers are still buying permits in Kathmandu. The gap is not supply. It is throughput.

What was opened

The 137 peaks are spread across four states: 51 in Uttarakhand — the largest allocation — 47 in Himachal Pradesh, 24 in Sikkim and 15 in Jammu and Kashmir. The opening was paired with the Indian Adventure Tourism Guidelines 2018, covering land, air and water-based activities from mountaineering and trekking to paragliding, kayaking and scuba diving, and with a push for states to register operators and enforce safety standards.

The price is not the problem

India’s peak fee schedule, administered through the Indian Mountaineering Foundation, is among the cheapest in the Himalayan region. Below 6,500 metres, a party of two pays USD 500. Between 6,501 and 7,000 metres, USD 700. Above 7,000 metres, USD 1,000 — plus USD 400 for each additional member up to seven and USD 450 thereafter, capped at twelve members. Trekking peaks begin at USD 200 for a pair, and liaison officer equipment hire costs USD 500. The East Karakoram is open only to joint expeditions with Indian counterparts.

The marquee summit is closed

The single most famous objective in the Indian Himalaya has been unavailable since 1983, when the government closed Nanda Devi to climbing. The sanctuary became a national park in 1982 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. Nanda Devi East, or Sunanda Devi, can be climbed only with special permission, on a three-to-four-month permit cycle coordinated between the Indian Mountaineering Foundation and Uttarakhand’s authorities, with applicants expected to demonstrate prior experience above 7,000 metres. Reopening proposals gathered pace across 2025 and 2026, with a possible pilot window under strict rules, but no full reopening has been confirmed.

The guide bottleneck

Certification, not access, is the harder constraint. India’s recognised institutes — the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, the Jawahar Institute of Mountaineering and Winter Sports, ABVIMAS at Manali and the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute at Darjeeling, with further centres at Gangtok, Dirang, Gulmarg and Auli — run basic and advanced courses and a special mountain guide course. But the internationally recognised IFMGA/UIAGM qualification, the credential that lets a guide work anywhere in the world, has been reached by Indian candidates partly through Nepal. Nepal National Mountain Guides Association, Nepal’s IFMGA member, ran an IFMGA-standard course in Ladakh in 2023 for 11 Indian trainees with the Ladakh Mountain Guide Association, and has trained candidates from India, Pakistan and Oman in Nepal.

A country that cannot certify its own high-altitude guides at international standard imports them, and exports the margin.

Demand exists — but the baseline is old

A published market study of Indian adventure tourism estimated roughly 3.1 million adventure tourist visits nationwide in 2015 and an organised market of about INR 1,772 crore — close to USD 270 million at mid-2010s exchange rates — with 73% of it booked through tour operators. The study also flagged safety standards and regulatory frameworks as areas needing strengthening. That baseline is now a decade old and no public study of comparable authority has replaced it; Swadesh Darshan 2.0 has since added destination-development funding, but the market’s true current size is not well measured.

Where the demand goes instead

In Nepal’s 2026 spring season, Indian climbers took 95 of the 1,134 permits issued by 8 May — 8.4% of the total — including 58 on Everest alone, the third-largest national cohort on the mountain behind China and the United States. They paid USD 15,000 each for the privilege, with the fee increase already in force.

Three things, not 137

India does not need to open more peaks; it opened 137 and left most of them idle. It needs to shorten permit lead times, settle the Nanda Devi question one way or the other, and build a guide-certification pipeline that produces IFMGA-standard professionals domestically. Until those three things move, the 137 peaks will remain a supply fact rather than a market — and the demand will keep crossing a border to be served.