A mention from an Icon in his memoirs : Prof Leszek Starkel On SaveTheHills

In the world of Geo-morphology, Prof Leszek Starkel of the Polish Academy of Sciences stands tall.
A virtual giant of a man and a pioneer in the studies of landslides in the Darjeeling Himalaya, he first came to Darjeeling after the Oct 1968 disaster and continued to turn up almost every year thereafter to trudge these mountains and write volumes.
I came across him quite by accident. A friend had loaned me Prof Starkel's book on landslides some time in early 2008 and while flipping thru the pages I found his email address on the last page of the book. I shot off an email to him and promptly forgot about it, never expecting a reply from someone as famous or as busy.
Almost 6 months later I received a reply from him saying he would be in this area in the autumn of 2008 and would be happy to meet me. What followed was almost history for STH - we quickly organized the first Seminar on Landslide Hazards at Darjeeling with Prof Starkel as our keynote speaker.
I found his 'Memoirs' recently while researching the 1968 disaster and have published the excerpts below:

The images of the 21Nov2008 Seminar are here

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong district
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya

Event of Note : DRR Seminar in North Bengal University

The full invite has a form to be filled up and calls for papers to be submitted, last date being
21Mar2018.

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong district
Darjeeling Sikkim Himalaya

STH Activity : Seminar on 'Development paradigm in the Mountains : a case study of Darjeeling and Kalimopng districts' (09Jan2018)

Referring our earlier blog
Some of the key take-aways from the seminar are :-

• Small towns and hamlets in the districts are urbanizing at a phenomenal rate, often in an unplanned manner.
• As they do so, the industries viz educational vocations, tourism, construction which are replacing traditional means of livelihood (main agro-based work) are more vulnerable to disaster.
• The study clearly showed the huge growth of human settlements and expansion of the developmental activities (such as road construction) along steep slopes or in the vicinity of landslide areas which results in a net increase of disaster risk in these regions.
• There is a need for landslide hazard zonation maps where available to be made public and easily accessible so as to incorporate this into the planning process.
• In the final analysis, there is an urgent need to better manage development activities in the mountains to reduce disaster risk.

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong District,
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya

Event of Note : Anugyalaya DRR Seminar in Darjeeling on 04Oct2016

STH is participating

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong,
Dist Darjeeling

Upcoming events : DRR Seminar on ' How safe are our Mountain Habitats?' at Kalimpong on 17Aug2015

With the weather exhibiting mood swings as in a bi-polar disorder, Kalimpong has been reeling under a spate of landslides (see previous blog) and it is therefore apt that we have chosen this town as the venue of a DRR seminar on 'How safe are our Mountain Habitats?'
The seminar is the initiative of the Darjeeling Chapter of InMI ( of which STH is a member)

Praful Rao,
Kalimpong,
Dist Darjeeling