Thinlas Chorol

Thinlas Chorol is a social entrepreneur and writer from Ladakh, India. She founded the Ladakhi Women's Travel Company and has written articles on tourism in Ladakh and other issues. She first gained notability when she in her early twenties started working as a trekking guide in the otherwise heavily male dominated trekking industry in Ladakh in northern India. In 2009 she founded the "Ladakhi Women's Travel Company" in order to bring more women into the field, and to promote ecotourism in Ladakh. And through Homestays, expose women in the village to people and cultures they would normally not have as much contact with. On the company's website, it promotes itself as being "The first female owned and operated travel company in Ladakh". In order to train more guides to come into the Ladakhi trekking industry, the company bring younger, inexperienced women along as porters. In 2013, Chorol was awarded the "Jankidevi Bajaj Puraskar for Rural Entrepreneurship" by "The Ladies' Wing of IMC Chamber of Commerce and Industry". At the time, she was the first women from the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, and the first women working in the field of tourism, to receive the award. And on 8 March 2018, international women's day, she received the Nari Shakti Puraskar (Women Power Award), highest civilian award for women in India. Today she lives outside of the town of Leh in Ladakh with her husband Lars Lidström.