Mustang The Forbidden Kingdom

Recounts a French explorer's visit to the remote Himalayan kingdom of Mustang in 1964.

Advances in global development have helped lift hundreds of millions of people from poverty in recent decades, but major challenges in fighting poverty remain. Billions of people continue to have little or no access to the basic necessities of life: clean water, food, shelter, education, and medical care. The random location of their birthplace limited much of what is possible in many of their lives. Yet legions of dedicated people today are proving that with the right approaches and resources, disciplined efforts to fight poverty can succeed—and with greater scale and impact than ever. In An Accident of Geography, author Richard C. Blum profiles many of them while narrating his inspiring personal story—accomplished private-equity investor especially in Asia, humanitarian, public policy advocate, and creator of an unprecedented, multidisciplinary curriculum in poverty and development studies that has attracted thousands of students on the ten campuses of the University of California and beyond. Blum offers practical guidance on what works best: giving poor people a greater voice in the field and applying key principles of 21st-century management, engineering, and development philanthropy. Put your accident of geography to work in helping others, and yourself Be the change maker you see in the mirror. ​All author proceeds from the sale of An Accident of Geography will be donated to projects advancing global development.

A tender account - by turns cultural exploration and memoir of a young woman's firsthand experience of change and continuity in one of the worlds most remote regions, through the lens of the horse and "horse culture." At nineteen, Sienna Craig made her first venture deep into Mustang, an ethnically Tibetan area of Nepal, in the rainshadow of the Himalayas. As an equestrian and a buddhing anthropologist, she sought not only to understand what it was like to rely on horses to navigate through the windswept valleys and plains of High Asia, but also to grasp how horses lent meaning to the lives of the Mustangi people. Through living and working with local Tibetan doctors, veterinarians, and other horse experts, as well as the deep friendships she formed, Sienna began to understand the region's history, and the way life in Mustang was being transformed in the face of temendous social, political, and economic shifts. She learned much about herself and her life's course through her year in Mustang - a place that came to feel, for all its foreignness, like home.

This monograph presents a comprehensive ethnography of the Thakali with particular reference to the Thak Khola valley of Mustang district, Nepal - the homeland of the Thakali. Based on several years of fieldwork since 1972, it provides detail and insight on Thakali history, culture and society.

Globalism as a global exchange of art and ideas: essays, memoirs, fiction, and poetry by writers including Arundhati Roy, Bill McKibben, and Naomi Klein. This collection of essays, memoirs, poems, stories, and artwork looks at globalization as a worldwide exchange of art and ideas. Writing the World focuses on the cultural realities of globalism -- the opportunities it provides to learn from other cultures. This knowledge, argue David Rothenberg and Wandee Pryor in their introduction, can be power: "When all of us learn enough about our differences to respect the diversity that exists, we will be unable to pretend we are the same. We will never accept the old innocence and ignorance bred by oppression and exploitation." For the contributors to Writing the World, to dream of the global village is to see the world not as a vast market but as a place of shared values and linked wonder."It is time to listen to the many literate voices the world speaks," say Rothenberg and Pryor. The voices of Writing the World range from Arundhati Roy on the "colonization of knowledge" in her essay "The Ladies Have Feelings, So... Shall We Leave It to the Experts?" to Naomi Klein's meditation on fences, ownership, and property. They include Bill McKibben on women farmers in Bangladesh, Hannes Westberg's account of being shot by Swedish police at a demonstration, James Barilla on invading and indigenous plant species in "The Aliens in the Garden," and many other vivid, compelling, and provocative writings that celebrate -- and illustrate -- "the poetry of cultural contact." Artists and photographers whose work appears in the book include Adam Clayman, Jenny Matthews, Richard Robinson, and Arpita Singh.

This book discusses the importance of mountain regions, and the precariousness of mountain tourism in the context of ecosystem and cultural conservation. It includes case studies of mountain tourism existing alongside environmental sustainability and community well being. The text presents an integrated approach to mountain-based tourism, balancing the needs of local communities, tourists and environmental conservation.

Many disenchanted Westerners have gone to the Himalayas in search of renewal, but no one has written about the experience as perceptively and personally as Andrew Stevenson in Annapurna Circuit. A traveller all his life, Stevenson responds to people and places with an openness unique to the cultural nomad - his portraits of the men, women and children of the Annapurnas, and the fellow-backpackers from all over the world who intermittently shared his journey, are a delight; his descriptions of the landscape, and the physical hardships of the trek are enthralling. But like every travel book of real quality, this is also the result of a spiritual journey. A richly rewarding read on every level, Annapurna Circuit is a modern travel classic in the tradition of Peter Matthiesson's Snow Leopard and Andrew Harvey's Journey to Ladakh.