Footprints on the Mountainside

I am just back from another ISABS lab. This is the second time I did my ALHP. This event was very special and very different in many ways.

This was a low budget initiative aimed at making ISABS and the T-Group processes accessible to sections of society that cannot afford the high budget programmes that usually happen in resorts and are willing to live in basic comfort.

This was completely different from previous experiences for me. Normally, participants live in comfortable air-con rooms on a twin or triple sharing basis, with separate areas for dining and laboratories. Here, the entire community was accommodated in four dormitories, which also doubled as labs and one of the dormitories was used as the dining room as well.

All through the duration of the community, there was a constant churning of participants among the group. You sleep with some of them, meet different people at meal times, attend your lab groups with still another set of them, prefer some of them for company in the evenings……. a constant shuffle of people you’re with, but no such thing as an isolated space for anyone.

I had been very apprehensive about this lack of space, but got so swept in the flow, that I don’t remember what exactly it was that I had been apprehensive about.

Ok, the food could have been better, the fans could have worked, and small comforts could have been missed by some, but the phenomenal community feeling was….. indescribable. People had just knitted together so close, that we had turned into one big family.

It was also an amazing experience to have such a large representation of people from the NGO sector in the community, and a valuable insight into perspectives we had never really been very close to.

I may write more about this eventually.

Paid advertisement

This is a social networking style site, where people can pay to learn languages. Myngle is still in beta, but I fell in love with the concept. This place connects people from all over the world and helps them learn new languages.

According to their FAQs, signing up is for free, but teachers are charged a small amount for using the platform for teaching, though they can upload their profiles for free. Different teachers set their charges and a student can pick up whatever is affordable. Sounds interesting, but one thing that I’m wondering about is the credibility of the teachers.

I mean, there are no qualifications required to be a teacher here. As long as a person can provide value….. well, that’s how learning languages is, isn’t it? So, you can actually have paid informal conversations which we traditionally call practice and do them for free in the real world. I guess that’s the price of having the right kind of person handy in the online world. However, what is there to assure us, that a teacher is as good as his charges make him seem (other than hindsight)?

There is nothing about that in their FAQs. Also, nothing that can allow for a refund if a teacher is just your average teenager trying to earn big money and you discover it too late. Or, if there is such a system in place, it is not there in their FAQs.

On the whole, an interesting concept, but a new service with an unknown paid factor, which may or not deliver. I’d say, use it for its convenience, but play it by ear. There probably will be some kind of rating or feedback system (its inevitable). Use it to figure out the people you want to learn from.

For teachers, I guess this is an excellent opportunity for some handy income sitting at home. All you need is broadband, Skype and a headset (which you also need if you’re a student)

Heh. This is an easy one for me to write, and if you really think about it, it is all stuff you know anyway. How many points for betting that you may not have thought of things like that?

One of the best ways of knowing if the promotion material’s claims and the experience match is hindsight. *ducks under the table*

Ok. I’m serious now. What follows are the real ways to tell.

1. Count the number of destinations offered, deduct 2 and divide by the number of days of your tour. If the number you get is greater than one, your tour is going to be too hectic to really see anything. The lower the number, the better. I like 0.7ish
2. Sleeping in a new hill station every night is not seeing the Himalaya. If you don’t have the time to do something special in each place, the pace is too fast.
3. Does your guide love the place he is showing you? If he doesn’t, you’re missing out on insights collected over years of experience - which is something you are paying for when you ask for a guide.
4. Ask to meet the guide before you pay. If your guide doesn’t go all enthusiastic about the place in ways not mentioned on the brouchre, you might as well save the money and travel with a road map and brouchre.
5. Does your guide speak the language of the place - even a little is good - but do you have someone handy to communicate with the locals?
6. Read what is being offered in the tour carefully. How much of it is statistics and luxury descriptions and how much is local information? You can be sure that the same will be reflected in your tour most of the time. So, if you want luxury, or if you want interesting stuff, or something else, reading up befopre paying up can be a good idea.
7. Ask questions. Before you pay, make an effort to read up about the place and ask questions in the meeting. Knowledge shows - even if it means admitting ignorance, but having a good idea on where to find out.
8. Do the people have a sense of fun? Self-explanatory.
9. Find out about other people on the tour and ideally, attend a group meeting to make your payments to get a good idea of whether you will gel with the group or not.
10. To find out if an operator is reliable - simply show an interest in an unlikely variety of tours anthropology and pilgrimage, for example. If they want to sell you anything you point at, get out fast. They don’t really care what your interests are, as long as you buy a tour.

Or come to Wide Aware

Its Ganesh Chaturthi time. This is big happenings near Mumbai and Pune. Everybody and his cousin will install a Ganesh idol in their home on Ganesh Chaturthi and keep it in their homes for worship for durations varying from a day and a half to 21 days. At the end of whatever duration has been selected, the idols are immersed into the sea/river/other water bodies.

It is a time of great worship and cultural value. Hindus believe it to be an honour (to themselves?) to host the God in their home. Even if you don’t follow this practice, you can’t remain unaffected. You will be invited to go and pay your respects in the homes of those you know. A time of meeting people and great joy.

Read more… »

Honestly, sometimes I feel like shutting down Wide Aware completely and I would, if that would stop people from “loving” the outdoors so much. But it will not, so the best I can do is to do my bit for the outdoors.

What is this bizarre mood I’m in? Its no bizarre mood. It is looking at some photo albums on the net. Lovely pictures of hill forts in the Sahyadri, with litter in the foreground.

What struck me, is that it is really no shock to find garbage almost anywhere you head out into the outdoors in India. Its like free decoration of the mountainside. Why is it so? Because there are so many people who love the outdoors, that they just have to go there. Apparently, once they have seen the place, its done. The place can go to hell for all they care after that.

You think I’m being anal? Think again. Been to Kondana caves? Why go that far? Been to the National Park? Even with people employed to keep the place clean, the garbage is not under control. The poor playground near the train station is literally swept with brooms every day and all it manages to achieve is soil erosion I guess. The flood of nature lovers doesn’t end.

Do everyone a favour folks. Stay the hell away from the outdoors, if picking up after yourself is beyond your capabilities. Pick up every bit of garbage you throw whether it is biodegradable or not. Smokers, don’t forget the stubs. and gutkha eaters, the wrappers are not for permanent route marking for hikers to come.

And yes, I’m angry. So would you be, if every spare moment in the outdoors was about cleaning up the place. And if you don’t, please do. Pick what litter you find. Speak with groups you come across and ask them to do the same.

Please, while you’re at it, pick up the degradable stuff as well. LEAVE NO TRACE. If possible minimize traces people have left too.

Bio-degradable stuff has an impact on the environment too. Plus, it is going to be litter until it decays, and the place will never be clean, because there will be other people throwing bio-degradable stuff constantly. To put it bluntly, shit is biodegradable. Do you like sitting next to it?

Think of a beautiful location in the outdoors. You’re the only person there. Its untouched. You like? Untouched is only going to be possible when we clean up the place and give it some time to recover. Not if we keep allowing “touches” to remain behind - degradable or not.

I almost forgot: Leave no trace! READ IT, PROMOTE IT, PRACTICE IT.