By Laura Caplins, July 23, 2007

One June 2, a group of students from Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA and Nature-Link Institute, Boone, NC traveled to the Garhwal regions of the Himalaya. Dr. Keith Bosak from Georgia Southern University and Laura Caplins from Nature-Link Institute accompanied a diverse group of students into the Himalaya. From June 1 to June 23, 2007 the group traveled from the hot plains of Delhi into the high altitude and alpine environments of the Garhwal.
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May 8, 2007 marked the beginning of an incredible three week, six credit hour adventure course for a team of fifteen students from Georgia Southern University (GSU). The students studied Sustainable Mountain Development and Mountain Geography while being led from the plains of Delhi to the towering Himalayan peaks of the Garhwal by Dr. Keith Bosak, a professor of Geography from GSU and Leah Wallach, a Biology student from Appalachian State University (ASU). The journey would not have been possible without Mountain Shepherds Cooperative which provided the team with highly experienced mountaineering guides who assisted the group from the moment they emerged from the Delhi airport till the time they returned home. The guides of this community-owned ecotourism company are trained at the Nerhu Institute of Mountaineering in basic mountaineering and advanced high altitude courses, making them some of the most experienced and knowledgeable guides in the region.
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On the Indo-Tibetan Frontier

Justine Wilson, one of the participants of the Inaugural Nanda Devi Women’s Trek, has posted her entire album of pictures from the India trip online. See it here.

JOSHIMATH, 18 Oct: This past weekend, the last of three international teams departed for Dharansi Pass in the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve as part of the Inaugural Nanda Devi Women’s Trek. Stopping over at eminent journalist Harish Chandola’s guest house near Auli, the group of four women including two Americans, a Canadian, and an Indian, acclimatized themselves to the high altitude before joining the second team at Lata, the traditional gateway village to the Nanda Devi peak.

Marking the thirtieth anniversary of the ill-fated 1976 Indo-American expedition that saw Nanda Devi Unsoeld, the twenty-two-year-old daughter of legendary mountaineer Willi Unsoeld perish on the peak that bore her name, the trek itself made history as the first venture of the wholly community-owned and operated Mountain Shepherds Initiative. Itself an outgrowth of the Nanda Devi Campaign, a five-year-old movement that had arisen out of even earlier environmental justice struggles by the people of the Nanda Devi Biosphere for their forest rights, the initiative hopes to set a model for socially conscious ecotourism in the entire Himalayan region.

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A unique graduation ceremony took place at the Nerhu Institute of Mountaineering on Saturday, where thirty-eight youth hailing mostly from the upper reaches of Chamoli, but also from Uttarkashi and Pithoragarh districts, completed their basic mountaineering course.

Organized by SPECS (Uttarakhand) and sponsored by the Winterline Foundation (USA), composed of alumni of the International Woodstock School in Mussoorie, the boys underwent the 35-day basic training regimen in preparation of the inaugural International Women’s Trek of the Nanda Devi Campaign later in October.
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