Back in Nepal

So I’m in Kathmandu again. Have I ever been away? I’ve been driving in the taxi today, leaving a piece of me in those vegetables on streets, women in colourful, shining and blinking clothes and jewelleries, in people’s beauty and above all – polluted dirty air, traffic, traffic, traffic (meaning hundreds of bikes and old cars miraculously going in between the people). Memories took over and started living their own life. I am here again. Is this all, is this real? Somehow I think that everything what was in between – was unreal and I actually I have never left this place.

But let’s finish with the philosophy. I think I need to give some more explanation to those who don’t know me or if know, then they still are confused about what is it that I am actually doing here.

Last year I went to Nepal for my first time. Together with my friend and master thesis colleague Linda we went through different stages of one month long field work. Long enough for me to get sick and never leave the feeling, the wish to come back. At that time we did a crazy thing – we combined environmental and developmental science in order to explore the role of social capital in adaptive capacity of rural Nepal. Crazy because we combined different disciplines along general principles of interdisciplinarity and against policies of our 2 different departments.

Half a year after being done with my master thesis I came across PhD announcement and there was one name which caught my attention – Nepal. I was reading the announcement cross over, being more convinced that it is not really what I want to do (I fully commit my soul to environment), but this one word didn’t go out of my mind. So I decided to apply, just for the sake of applying and training in going for interviews. And that’s how it started.

Now I am a PhD student of Copenhagen University department of Geology and Geography, proudly calling myself human geographer. To be more precise, I’m a part of the Danish-Nepali-Indian project called “Nepal on the Move”. What I am doing is analysis of multilocalities impact upon community construction in rural East middle hill Nepal. In practical terms it means 8+3 months of fieldwork in Nepal, the rest devoted to literature review, articles and teaching.

But this blog is not about my PhD or ethnographic experiences (in fact, I will write this as well in a separate ethnographic blog). It is about…

instead of defining it I prefer to bring up the quote “travelling brings unconsciousness into consciousness”. Whatever you may understand with that.