December Plans, how do we know where to go?

Today I awoke to find about 50,000+ people out my window at 4AM. Today, the women of this region break the 3 day fast they have been holding for their husbands (Personally I don’t think men are worth that). Thousands upon thousands of people lined the Ghats performing many different rituals that would take a scholar quite some time to understand, and of which I humbly lack the patience for.

In the coming month I will be completing the proposal for my field research project. This project will mostly take place in the Spring Semester, and will focus on Waste Management in Benares. I have included my proposal for those of you who are interested: 

This project will focus on Varanasi’s public cultural perceptions of local solid waste practices. Although the local waste practices will be introduced to the reader, this research is meant to focus less on the waste management and more upon how the citizens of Varanasi understand their active role in the environment. Thru numerous interviews with local citizens in Varanasi’s haphazard modernization, I will search for any developing themes within my data to develop a formal thesis. By focusing on the cultural aspect of waste in Varanasi it will be my attempt disabuse international misinterpretations of a “dirty Indian society” and to show that India’s (specifically in Varanasi) practices of waste management are an implication of the Caste System’s inefficiency in a globalizing context.

This project will consume my spring semester which ends in the middle of April, and will prevent me from doing too much travel. 

So I plan on taking a vacation in the month of December. This vacation scares some, thrills others, and will give me the needed exploration my soul desires. I leave for Kathmandu, Nepal on the 4th of December (if all goes as planned, this is India). When I arrive in Kathmandu two days later, by bus, I will find a hotel and some warm clothes. Picking up the necessary supplies over the following days, I will be preparing an adventure. After collecting all of the necessities, I will leave Kathmandu, hopefully by a shared jeep for the town of Jiri. This town was the starting location for a very famous expedition 50 some odd years ago. This expedition was led by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, his guide. Their goal was summit of the highest place on the planet, the Peak of Mount Everest. My goal is not quite so lofty (at this time...). Over the following few weeks I will climb through passes and up valleys with the goal of reaching Everest Base Camp on Christmas Eve. I will spend my Christmas this year on top of the world! After spending a few days on the top, I will hike down, fly out and spend my remaining holiday in Kathmandu. Celebrating New Years in Kathmandu.

While I know this trip is not exactly everyone’s idea of a vacation, and I will most likely arrive back in Benares more exhausted then when I left, I think I will be rejuvenated. Having received my dose of nature for the semester, I can then focus on my work. I have rediscovered my disdain for city living in my time here. Cities are dirty, busy, and filled with much too many people for my taste. This is the future for our Modern World? God am I disappointed! I need my commune with my God, Nature. Nature is the one thing that connects us to the roots of existence, and we will not find her in the concrete Jungles we build around ourselves (Human Ecology). Humans truly need to understand where they came from before we can decide where we will go in the future (History). This is key to our understanding of the relationship we have with the global environment, and the understanding that this relationship is not a one way street (Human Geography). We cannot continue to take from our environment in the manner we have done so, this is a closed ecosystem, and if we consume the entirety of one product we will not simply be able to find more, because there won’t be any more. We need to start developing new processes now that will lead to a sustainable future (Environmentalism and Sustainability). 

All of these things, human ecology, history, human geography, and environmentalism coupled with sustainability studies, drive my thinking. I always catch myself talking about politics and human to human interaction in regular conversation, but human-human interaction will always be a struggle. However, human-nature environment need not be forever. We are intelligent enough creatures to work within a global context of the human-nature relationship to preserve this relationship. I guess this is something I can strive for. Something I can put myself into with the hope of making some advancement. Humans, I fear, will continue to hate, continue to take advantage, and continue to fight even kill one another. How can we change human nature? 

Enough of my philosophical touting. I leave you with this quote I recently found: 

     Traveler, there is no path 

     paths are made by walking.  

                 - Antonio Machado, Cantores

I am walking...

~ Craig