Members of the Travel Agents’ Association, along with the army and police, evacuate some tourists stranded in the high altitude areas of Nathu-la following heavy snowfall on December 27, 2008

Gangtok, May 9: They are experts in their own rights in fields like skiing, botany, rock climbing, mountaineering, rafting and bird watching, transforming Sikkim into a multi-faceted tourist destination over the past 21 years.

Even as the travel agents are reaping the golden harvest of a booming tourism industry, they have found time to provide an all out assistance to visitors caught in unfortunate situations in the Himalayan state dotted with hills and ravines.

Their umbrella organisation, the Travel Agents’ Association of Sikkim (TAAS) has earned a rather unflattering sobriquet of “the undertaker” over the years as its members have recovered bodies of unfortunate tourists from deep gorges and cremated them here with full rituals or airlifted the coffins to the bereaved families.

In October 2000, five members of a tourist group from Calcutta were killed when their vehicle crashed while travelling from Gangtok to Yumthang along North Sikkim Highway.

Working along with police and other government authorities, the TAAS members, led by their president Paljor Lachungpa, recovered the bodies and arranged for transport and medical facilities for the other three injured tourists. The TAAS also bore all the expenses, including the injured visitors’ journey back to Calcutta.

The operators cremated the bodies of the four tourists at Ranipool cremation ground here in the presence of their relatives and sent the body of the fifth victim to his hometown of Behrampore.

The TAAS, which has 245 members, came forward with help when a road accident at Burtuk on the outskirts of Gangtok in July 2003 killed five persons, four of them belonging to a single family, from New Delhi.

While similar services were being rendered by it in several accidents involving tourists in the past few years, the TAAS was also part of most rescue missions where visitors were stranded in remote areas of North Sikkim or in snow clad corridor of Nathu-la border because of inclement weather.

The executive members of the association in Yumthang Valley, North Sikkim

“During such times, the TAAS is always in the forefront to support the stranded tourists and their families. Immediate medical relief, accommodation and transportation are provided to the tourists. In case of deaths, we work closely with police and provide help in getting the body released after post-mortem, get documents from the authorities and cremate the body here or provide coffins to reach the body right their homes,” said TAAS general secretary Lukendra Rasaily.

“We are sometimes called the undertaker but we don’t mind and we do all we can for the tourists,” said Rasaily, one of the founder members of the TAAS.

The TAAS had been formed in 1989 with the guidance of the then state tourism secretary, Karma Gyatso (now additional chief secretary). Today, 12 members of the TAAS are recognised by the Union Ministry of tourism, the highest number in the Northeast.

The TAAS has set up its own institute for tourism and hospitality in 2009, where 25 youths were trained as alpine guides.

With 20 successful years of promoting Sikkim tourism behind it, the TAAS has now plans for the third decade.

“We now want to attract quality tourism as Sikkim’s carrying capacity is limited. We are now targeting niche markets and train our youth in tourism sector. We also want to expand our business to the other parts of the North-east,” said Lachungpa.