When Coronavirus first began to explode in India I panicked for the people of the Himalayas, the villagers occupying hundreds of villages in the sacred mountains above Rishikesh where I have been blessed to live for the past 24 years. Over the course of trips to the sacred temples of Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath as well as on visits to Uttarkashi, Rudra Prayag and other Himalayan holy areas, I’ve witnessed the villagers’ exquisitely simple lifestyles, small one room homes with adjacent fields for feeding their families and maybe even selling a bit in a local market.

Every few minutes on the road, our car passes a woman, or more typically a group of three or four women, with many kilograms of tree branches tied to their heads to cook the evening meal.  If Covid spread to these villages, would anyone even survive? The people are typically uneducated, without access to technology. Many places are still accessible only by foot.