A Himalayan Adventure: Nepal’s Rocks and Temples
20 September – 05 October 2022

It’s not just the landscape of Nepal which has been shaped by tectonic plate movements; every aspect of life, from the architecture to the food, is influenced by the mountainous environment. It’s for this reason that Indus Experiences’ Himalayan Rocks and Temples will be led by not one but two specialist lecturers: Mike Searle, Professor of Earth Sciences and Fellow of Worcester College and David Gellner, Professor of Social Anthropology and Fellow of All Souls College.

All participants in this tour must be fit enough to trek over occasionally challenging terrain for up to five or six hours per day.

We plan to follow this detailed itinerary, but events beyond our control – unpredictable weather, unruly rivers, blocked roads, cancelled flights, mechanical breakdown – may require changes and work-arounds at the last moment.

Accommodation varies between excellent hotels in Kathmandu and Pokhara to trekking lodges in the Kali Gandaki. Trekking lodges typically are simple rooms with very basic interiors, single beds with basic furniture (if any) and generally outside toilets. Some toilets will be local drop types rather than western sit down types.

Degree of trekking difficulty will be average - not excessive and generally along flat along river valleys or gently inclined ridges. One characteristic of the Kali Gandaki are daily strong winds that rush down the valley. Headscarfs are advised.

Altitude varies between 2900 meters at Kagbeni up to 3760 m at Lo Mantang.

Professor Mike Searle

Professor Mike Searle was brought up in Oman since age 15 when his father worked for the oil company PDO (Shell). He did fieldwork for his PhD (1980) in Oman and has spent the last 30 years working almost every year on his own research projects with students and colleagues both in Oman and along the Himalaya in Pakistan, India, Nepal and Tibet. He has been at Oxford University since 1990 and is now Professor of Earth Science and a Senior Research fellow in Worcester college. He has published more than 220 papers, co-edited 5 books, written 2 books including 'Colliding Continents' (Oxford University Press) and appeared in 5 geological programmes for the BBC, Channel 5, History channel and others on the making of Everest and other Himalayan topics. He has also carried out fieldwork along the Himalaya, Karakoram, Tibet, Burma, Vietnam, Jordan, Syria and the Aegean islands, Greece.

Professor David Gellner

David Gellner has been researching religion, culture, ethnicity, and politics in Nepal since 1980. He has written or edited sixteen books and numerous articles on Nepal and/or South Asia. In 2016 he was invited to give the prestigious Mahesh Chandra Regmi Lecture, which he titled 'The Idea of Nepal' (http://soscbaha.org/downloads/mcrl2016.pdf). He still remembers a little of the Sanskrit he studied as a graduate student, and he speaks both Nepali (the national language) and Newari (the Tibeto-Burman language of the Newars, the original inhabitants of the Kathmandu Valley).