Students go abroad to study in Himalayas

·         http://www.montanakaimin.com/index.php/news/news_article/students_go_abroad_to_study_in_himalayas/

Story by Collin Behan | October 7, 2009
Montana Kaimin

The Indian Himalaya study abroad program is gearing up to accept applications for its summer 2010 course.

Last summer was the first time the University offered the program, but faculty leader Keith Bosak, assistant professor of Nature Based Tourism and Recreation, has lead similar trips at other universities since 2005. The majority of the trip takes place in the Nanda Devi Biosphere, a strictly controlled national park in the mountainous Garhwal region of the north Indian state of Uttarakhand. The park is made up of two core zones off limits to people and is surrounded by a 3,100 square-mile buffer zone in which there are villages.

 “The Nanda Devi Biosphere is 1.5 million acres, roughly, and it’s one of the last great wilderness areas in the Himalayas,” Bosak said.

The biosphere region was formed by the Indian government in 1982 along strictly controlled guidelines. Only a few scientific expeditions have entered the core areas in the last few years. Even in the populated buffer zones traditional livelihoods became more difficult when most traditional livestock grazing and plant gathering was banned, Bosak said.

“What you have here is a group of people who, because of the conservation measures and polices in the Nanda Devi biosphere reserve, had their sort of traditional livelihoods taken away,” Bosak said.

The locals in the region agreed to focus their economic efforts on sustainable tourism, Bosak said. The core classes of the trip will equally emphasize the environment with the development of sustainable tourism and economies in the region, he said.

“The main goal is to introduce students to environment and development in the Himalaya,” Bosak said.

Students are assigned daily readings followed by field instruction on those readings and a writing assignment on combined readings and instruction, he said. The core packet is roughly 600 pages, Bosak said.

Participants will receive six upper-division credits for the program in two separate classes cross listed by the College of Forestry and the recreation management and geography programs. Both the credits count for either graduate or undergraduate study. Last year, 12 students went on the trip, 10 from UM and two others from Maryland and North Carolina State.

“You probably can’t brace yourself for the culture shock when you land in New Delhi,” said UM natural resources senior Logan Miller, who took the trip last year. “But by the time you get to the mountains, you’ll forget all about it.”

The trip this year runs from May 18 through June 10. At $3395, the fee covers all tuition and program costs, but not airfare to India.

In addition to sending students to study in the Nandi Devi Biosphere Reserve, the organizers run an outdoor gear donation program called Gear for Garhwal. Eric Legvold, executive director of the Nature-Link Institute, which leads the trip, organized the donation drive. Last spring, the program allowed people in Missoula to drop off used gear at various locations around town. It was then brought to the guides of Mountain Shepherds eco-tourism company.

Making around $5 a day, the porters and guides don’t have the budget to buy the alpine mountaineering equipment necessary to run the organization, Legvold said. By bringing donated clothing and equipment to the guide service, the study abroad program gives something back to the community, he said. Legvold said the donation drive, which will run again this spring beginning in March, raised around $20,000 worth of gear.

“It’s great to see your favorite porter wearing $1500 worth of Patagonia gear,” Legvold said.

Environmental geography senior Dan Lowrie, who went on the trip last year, said the most valuable part of the trip was learning directly from locals about what they needed from the environment and how to get it in a sustainable way.

“It was very positive both in a cultural mindset and educational,” he said. “It would be worth a good six months in education in three weeks.”