UK to Dharamsala
March 2007 - February 2008
Presentation
We
are a group of loosely connected people from the U.K. and other countries,
from different cultural and religious (or non-religious) backgrounds that
for a long time have been disturbed by the situation in Tibet and that
also - like so many - have become increasingly worried about so many other
things happening on and to this little planet. Apart from those in whose
interest it is to keep denying the facts meanwhile everyone is aware of
the consequences of human-induced environmental degradation and climate
change.
Which is why we've decided to do this journey in a simple, low-tech, less
polluting way: on bicycles.
In the sixties and seventies people would do the trail to India with a
(polluting) van. Nowadays everyone is busy flying all over place on cheap
airfares. We want to go back a bit to the old ways of travelling. We will
not stick to a too rigid timetable. We want to take it easy, see the changes
in the landscapes, meet the people and so on. With this project we aim
to encourage and promote bicycle usage and overland low-impact travel.
We dedicate
this journey first of all to the Tibetan people, which have been suffering
at the hands of the Chinese regime for more than fifty years meanwhile.
But equally to all those that are the (mostly) undeserved victims from
the consequences of the polluting "western" consumerist life-style.
This listing is very incomplete, but we think - amongst others - about
the Inuit who see their habitat slowly melting away, the people from the
small Pacific archipelagos that have to move away from their islands,
the Masai that have to gradually give up on their centuries-old nomadic
lifestyle due to the increasing draughts, the Indians in the rainforests
that get gradually destroyed, the people from Bangladesh that increasingly
suffer from extreme wheather and floods, those that died in Western Europe
(mainly France) because of the 2003 heatwave, the victims in New Orleans,
the victims of the recent tornadoes in Florida, then the floods in Indonesia.
And you know that this list can - sooner or later - be continued until
it reaches everyone's doorstep. The January storms in Europe were a case
in point: at once even here we were in the middle of things that before
we would only see on special reports on e.g. National Geographic: scaffolding
collapsing in East London, a crane being blown over a university building
in Holland, overturned lorries, the rail network in Germany being nearly
totally paralysed , planes unable to land, etc.
Given
the diffuse and international composition of our group we have choosen
not to form a structure, as this would demand too much endless administrative
bother which we judged would not be beneficial to the project. If you
like what we're doing you can help in various ways: maybe join us for
a while, or make a small donation towards food or camping costs when we
cycle through your area, or you can support one of the recommended organisations
you will find on our website. However, we want to state that we are not
linked to any of these. There are lots of good causes that deserve attention,
and we cannot highlight them all.
As mascots for our trip we have choosen two mammals from - at first
view - opposite ends of the spectre: the polar bear and the chiru, the
Tibetan antelope. Both are suffering due to human activity. The polar
bears see their habitat gradually melt away due to global warming. The
Tibetan antelopes have been decimated because of poaching (for their fur)
but also because their traditional routes on the Tibetan plateau have
been altered due to the fences that became introduced by the agricultural
practices of the Chinese colonialists.
