Without fanfare, Dutch woman has been cleaning Dal Lake for five years 

By: Nadeem Khan

Srinagar — In an age of social media activism and curated concern, where environmental causes are too often measured in social media likes, one woman has chosen an older, quieter path. Day after day, Ellis Hubertina Spaaanderman, a 69-year-old woman from the Netherlands, rows her humble boat across the iconic Dal Lake, not for leisure, but for labor. And for the past five years, she has been doing what millions of us have neglected to do on our own: she cleans.

No fanfare. No foundation. No funding appeal. Just a woman, a boat, a pair of gloves and an untiring zeal to make the lake better.

Today, as Dal Lake struggles with encroachment, casual trash dumping, sewage discharge, climate change and reckless tourism, Ellis’s solitary act has grown into something bigger than cleaning. It is a symbolic act to make the Dal dwellers and people visiting it for leisure to act.

Ellis first visited Kashmir 25 years ago, drawn like many by the valley’s amazing natural beauty. But it wasn’t the snow-capped peaks or houseboats that brought her back—it was the lake itself, and the slow, painful way it was being choked by neglect. “I couldn’t watch it die,” she says quietly. “Dal Lake is not a tourist site, it is a living being.”

And so, she returned. Not as a tourist, but as a guardian.

Every morning, with little more than a cloth hat to shield her from the sun, she sets out from the banks of the lake in her simple wooden boat. It’s not the kind that tourists ride. This one is work-worn and stained with time. She rows through lily beds, past floating gardens and houseboats, collecting what most of us would rather not see: discarded plastic bottles, food wrappers, broken slippers, and household waste. Sometimes, she waves at passing shikara riders. Most of the time, she’s met with bemused stares—or silence.

In a place where environmental policy is often discussed in conference halls but rarely applied with urgency, Ellis’s daily act feels revolutionary. Not because it is grand, but because it is consistent. In the past five years, she has removed more garbage from the lake than many municipal drives have managed.

Her work is a mirror. It forces uncomfortable questions: Why do we allow such desecration of something so vital to our heritage and ecology? Why must it take a 69-year-old woman from across the globe to do what we, the people of Kashmir, should be leading?

Locals who know of her now call her “the Lady of the Lake.” But Ellis dismisses the title. “I am not special,” she insists. “Anyone can pick up a bottle. Everyone should.”

But perhaps it is precisely her refusal to accept praise that makes her work so profound. There are no hashtags on her oar. No press releases or awards. She speaks little about what she does, preferring instead to do it. She believes change is not something that needs to be declared, but done quietly, stubbornly, every single day.

It is a reminder that while we often wait for governments, NGOs, or technology to save our environment, sometimes it begins with one person who simply refuses to look away.