Lumbini to Lo Manthang: Experiential Learning in Nepal
For Duke students, the three-week trip was a window into the ties between environmental change and human well-being
The following is a summary of a story that originally appears on Nicholas Narratives.
In the mid-2000s, residents of Samdzong, an ancient community perched high in the Himalayas of Nepal, began to leave their village for good. The freshwater springs and streams they had relied on for generations were drying up, in part due to climate change. By around 2016, they had built a new village from the ground up near a river several miles from their homeland.
This past summer, nine Duke undergraduate and graduate students visited the new village, called New Samdzong, during a three-week trip through Nepal. The visit was part of a new experiential learning program focused on planetary health — the idea that human health and well-being are inseparable from the Earth’s natural systems.
Organized by an international team of experts led by Brian McAdoo, geosciences professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment, the program also included students from Nepal, India, China and the United Arab Emirates.
In Nepal, climate change affects rural and urban communities in acute and dramatically different ways. Students saw some of these impacts firsthand. Traveling by bus, jeep and foot, they journeyed from the low-lying province of Lumbini — the birthplace of Buddha — to Lo Manthang, an ancient walled city in the mountains. Along the way, they met local community members and experts who challenged their perspectives in ways impossible to replicate in a lecture hall.
“The [Lumbini to Lo Manthang] trip is seriously one of the most enlightening, inspiring and intellectually stimulating experiences that I’ve had at Duke,” says senior Chloe Young. “It has really shaped my curiosities, my relationships and the way that I think about these global issues that we talk about so much in the classroom.”
For the complete story and to see photos of the trip, go to Nicholas Narratives.
