Sange Tsering was barely 15 years old when he went for a trek in the Himalayas with an American backpacker. Many days were spent trekking in the bosom of seraphic mountains, changing his life forever. He was lucky to discover his passion so early in his life. And his passion would become his profession. He declared to his family: ‘I will be a tour guide.’
Sange, a sensitive and responsible young man, with mild manners and firm resolve, wants to return it back to the community, and has a novel way of doing it.
A native of Arunachal Pradesh, Sange thought what could be better than to make a living helping others experience the same bliss, opening nature’s pandora box for his clients: an experience of a lifetime traversing the Himalayas in north eastern India.
Initially, no one in the family took him seriously, or his resolve lightly that he had made up his mind. His maternal uncle, Tsering Wange, who was one the first tour operators in the state, was his inspiration.
He kept toying with the idea, even when he was in Delhi. Facebook came handy. While residing in Delhi, barely out of his teenage years, Sange started the Facebook group called Holiday Scout, to invite people from all over the world to visit Arunachal. Not just that, he extended them help to organise a memorable trip, and then accompany them in the trekking expeditions.
He did well, attracting people who are in love with nature for varied fields–naturalists, birders, photographers, trekkers from India and across the globe.
Sange later diversified, and started organising trips outside of Arunachal, in other states of northeastern India. He knows the seven sisters (seven states in north east India) like the back of his hand. He went for dozens of expeditions accompanying his clients, and each of these trips was experientially significant for him, and had a profound impact on him.
Sange wanted to make it big to attract more and more eco-friendly travellers. To grow he will have to move back to Arunachal from Delhi. This realisation came as a rude shock. “What am I doing in Delhi?” Ordinarily, Delhi pulls people from other parts of the country, he gets repelled.
In 2016, he came back to his hometown Bomdila, and invested all his savings to establish Dirang Boutique Cottage–exemplified his idea of eco-friendly tourism: to experience nature in all its magnificence but never, in the process, cause harm. There has to be the right balance, and that comes when you appreciate the ways of nature.
Dirang Boutique Cottage did well because he met his commitment to giving his clients a memorable experience. Sange never gets tired of a pleasure trip with his clients, many of them became his good friends and supporters, and he developed a small community of people who support his responsible ecological tourism. As luck would have it, two of his very satisfied clients who became good friends were famous travel bloggers, Racheal and Anna. They promoted Holiday Scout.
The Covid years were challenging, but he has emerged stronger. He has devoted all his savings, yet again, to create an eight-room hotel with state of art ecologically friendly-Bomdila Embassy Homestay. It’s not far from Eagle Nest—the famous birding site of the region.
I met Sange after many years in Delhi, and was moved by his commitment to nature, his clients, and the altruist spirit with which he operates. Tourism is about experience, and that's the sum total of ecology, cuisine, culture, art and handicrafts.
Sange is grateful to all those he associated with and made his enterprise a fulfilling one both in terms of ensuring ecological wellbeing and experiential bliss.
Sange, a sensitive and responsible young man, with mild manners and firm resolve, wants to return it back to the community, and has a novel way of doing it. He is perhaps the only person in the world to have adopted sisters, three of them from an impoverished family. The older two stayed with his mother and him like a family, and all their expenses were met by him. They grew up into formidable women, eldest is the chef, second is pursuing college, while the third stays in a residential school and is prepping for a bright future.
Not just this, Sange has pursued welfare projects with equal enthusiasm as his work. He takes them up randomly like when he was travelling with a group in the Twang area, he came across an old age home. The inmates were miserable for an avoidable reason: the unavailability of hot water.
Sange took it upon himself to get a 500-litre boiler installed within a week—its transportation to this inaccessible part of the mountains was a logistical feat. He was helped by the locals, particularly children from a neighbouring orphanage. He soon realised that the orphanage had the same problem. Sange got another water boiler installed in the next few weeks.
This is one of many projects he undertook out of pure compassion and altruism, and is indicative of the kind of person he is and how he gives back to the community.
A foodie, Sange enjoys his meals during expeditions across the Himalayas. And he has been doing so for nearly a decade, and that has had an adverse effect on his health. Sange now is more circumspect about what he eats, but his wanderlust remains strong and he never misses an opportunity to be out in nature for days together.
Sange, has a childish face, with an intent look on a smiling face. He’s polite but unequivocal in his response, and firm in his resolve. He has learned while working, and is easy going yet a man of strong convictions. He is affable and gets along well with all kinds of people for he’s not an imposing personality–as long as people love nature and are ecologically sensitive in their conduct. His benign self leaves a lasting impression on his clients, who want to come back to him again and again.
“How come a charming man like you is still single?” I ask him. He smiles. Talks candidly about his share of relationships and heartbreaks. In one case, he broke up with a girlfriend because he moved from Delhi to Bomdila, she wasn’t keen to do the same. There’s no doubt that Sange leads a fairly challenging life, is on the move for a good part of the year, and his life partner has to be in love with what he does so fervently to be able to love him.
“I will marry when I have established a good business,” he promised his mother many years ago. He has now met his own precondition to marry. “Therefore, I’m open to the idea,” he quips.
Sange, a first-generation Facebook entrepreneur, employed technology to show pristine nature in its full glory. As John Muir famously wrote, “into the woods, I got to lose my mind and find my soul.” For soul-searching contact Sange.
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