The Green Locus: First Update

Yesterday was a truly blessed one for 3 reasons! 


1. Our Planeterra membership got approved. Planeterra is a not-for-profit organization that invests in global initiatives aimed at addressing the social and environmental needs of people and places travelers visit worldwide

2. We received our first set of camping tents.

3. The work on our official website has started.

The momentum is on. Hope to keep up the pace. Fingers crossed to deliver the Green Locus experience to our first batch of travelers. Hope its a good one!

"The Green Locus" is born!

Out there its all green. Its all waiting to be explored. And it has a name...

The pertinent question was what is it that we would like our ideology to be called? We did not want to call it a firm, a company, or an organization because we were none! We just had a thought, an idea, an ideology. We didn't know how we could make it known to people. Perhaps make it a business? An NGO? A co-operative? We didn’t know! So, it made all sense to just call it an “ideology” and the obvious next step was to give it a name.

We wanted a name and a logo that describes our identity and touches each aspect of our ideology: the people, the culture and the nature. It was easy to derive one common theme which kind of dwells in our area of work. The Greenery! All locations that we are working at are in the green Kumaun Hills. When you work or live close to nature you realize that it is an integral part of your being, somehow you feel connected to it. It is a connection which can only be felt and can hardly be described. So, the starting point we thought, could not be better than green mountains.

And so, here we went... Green mountains.

Green Mountains

OK. A little work done. What next? I thought to myself, this looks incomplete. There is something very elementary missing. And then suddenly it clicked. We need some sunshine on these hills!

So here we go, a little sunny speck between the hills.

Suddenly it was all looking like a grade 1 drawing class except that we were not using scales, set-squares, compasses or crayons, we were making use of powerpoint and auto shapes and colouring them at our will! This was turning out to be a lot more fun than I had expected. The iconic scenery which we all have created during childhood flashed through our minds. Wow! I had never imagined that I could make such a use of a subject which I considered worthless during my school days. Suddenly that reminded me of my drawing teachers and made them the subject of my respect and gratitude!

By now, colour green was all over our minds. And why not, we thought, after all if there is a colour that symbolizes the life in the hills, it is green. It is the colour that surrounds us in these mountains and it is the colour that we want people to get familiar with. Green is the colour of the the plant life, the colour of prosperity and in the words of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the second president of India while describing the green colour on the Indian national flag: "... The green shows our relation to (the) soil, our relation to the plant life here, on which all other life depends." So that was it. Look no further. We adopted the word and the colour Green. And now we just wanted it to be complete. A bit of thinking and we came down to 4 names:

Mood Green - probably describing the mood that we were in and thinking about.
Green Woods - quite simply means Green jungles.
Modus Green - Our work is Green and needless to point out - environment friendly.

And then, the masterpiece. The Green Locus!

WOW! my wife said and that was the stamp of approval for me. All said and done, it felt like this very much relates to the vast expanse in the Kumaun Himalayas that we would work in. Out there its all green! And voila! We thought, that could be the logo line. Suddenly there was clarity and consensus!

So now, we wanted to incorporate this in our logo as well. I scribbled down a few doodles on a notebook and also wrote The Green Locus on a powerpoint slide. Tried a few different fonts and finally came up with this.

OK. This is fine. Now combine this with the logo.

So, we had something at our hand. Now was the time for some critical thinking. Does it embody all that we stand for? Does it include the three aspects that we touch in our work: Nature, Culture and People? Well, Nature, yes, definitely! But what about culture and people? We wanted a dash of both. Which means, we were not done yet.

What could it be? We thought for a while before a little painting flashed across my mind. I remembered that my mother used to paint two little foots symbolizing Goddess Laxmi, the Goddess of wealth and prosperity, on the floor of our house during the time of Diwali, the festival of light. This painting is called Aipan and is very famous in the Kumaun region of Himalayas. It is totally eco-friendly as it is made of rice paste very craftily spread over Terracotta patches to make intricate designs.

AIPAN - A Kumauni art form

This is very specific to the Kumaun region and we immediately wanted this to be a part of our logo. So, I replaced the O in LOCUS with the circular Aipan design. Then we thought, if these feet could signify a Goddess why not throw an irony and use a separate pair of feet to exemplify the bare-footed woman from the hills who often treads the forests in search of wood for fuel and grass for their livestock? Women, it must be told, in this part of the country have been living a life full of struggle since ages. A life which she has been able to live through just on a strong will to live and bring up her children. Its a massive social issue in the hills and its only until recently that women have stood up against the malpractices that haunt this region. So, there we added another pair of feet and this was how the logo appeared now.

To me that was it! A job well done I thought. But as usually is the case, the power of attorney rests with my wife. She concluded that the logo ignores a very basic geographical feature of the Kumaun Himalayas, the Snow covered peaks of higher Himalayas. So we wanted this to be present in the logo, but how? A white snow line in white background didn’t make sense. The solution, a black background. So finally, the Sun on our logo took a back seat and the Himalayan snowline towered behind the green hills.

The Green Locus

The Green Locus had been born! It was a moment of silent admiration. What we had was a simple design. Yet to us, it was nothing less than a masterpiece. It was a naive yet heartily attempt at building a logo that exemplifies the philosophy of The Green Locus.

The start

I have always been awestruck by the Himalayas. Their might, magnificence and sheer beauty has always struck a deep note in my heart. Not to forget that being born and brought up in the Himalayan foothills has always given me that yearning to get closer to the mountains. It was probably this yearning that was ringing bells in my heart ever since I acquired sensible amount of sense to understand what is it that I want to do and when.

Himalayas

Its true and its final. I do not belong to offices within confines of 6 walls. My office is in the open. In the open where I can breathe easy, where sunshine is in plenty, where air is not conditioned and where my time and efforts are for me, my people and for my environment. Let me confess, this realization wasn’t an easy one. After months of thinking and exploring about what is it that i want to do, it finally dawned upon me one night when i was discussing my (then thought of) plan with my wife.

Open office in the woods

I had been thinking of an incentive based travel program which is not commonplace in India or in any place in the world either. Something of the sort of what Mahindra Holidays or Country Club does. But what they offer is just restricted to the properties that they hold in India and abroad. For example: Being a Mahindra Club member, I might get to stay in Nainital, but if I want to stay in a very non-touristy place i might not get a Mahindra property to live in. Its the number that matters for these companies. Number of tourists. The game is all about traffic.

This didn't fare well with my line of thinking. There were a few reasons for that:

1. My primary motive is not just monetary gain, it is more about creating a business that gives back to all stakeholders involved. This may sound a bit philosophical and a little philanthropic but it is what it is.
2. Incentive based Travel Programs take a lot to get to the helm. It requires investment (big investment), it requires connections, it requires a deep understanding of CRM. Even if these things are taken care of it would still be very much dependent on some amount of relevant experience in the hospitality industry which I don't have.
3. Gives less takes more: The most important factor was that at the end of the day these are businesses catering to very generic tourist demands. There is nothing or very little that these business give back to the stakeholders, the real stakeholders. These are the local people, the local environment and in a more “in spirit” form, the local traditions and culture. What it is, is a one way path, which caters to the tourists. What it should be is a multi-dimensional bond- give to the tourists, give back to the environment and the local community and in the process keep the local cultures and traditions alive. It is this essence of taking-less-giving-more which is missing from these businesses.
4. A more personal reason was, as I mentioned earlier, my bond with the mountains and the want of doing something for the community at large.

Some extensive research since conceiving the idea brought to the front the terms like Eco-tourism, responsible tourism, community based tourism, sustainable tourism, all of which immediately struck chords with me. It was also heartening to know that some folks have been doing a lot in this field and have been quite successful in conveying the message they want to deliver to the larger community. For example there is this organization called “The Blue Yonder” which works in the field of sustainable tourism in Kerala and have helped spreading the awareness about local communities, their traditions, their music, there food and their life in whole. These are novel ideas in much sense:

1. Their motive first of all is to foster a healthy travel-ecosystem which establishes a close symbiotic relationship between the travellers, the local community and the environment.
2. From perspective of the travellers (or tourists if you like) it motivates them to positively affect or perhaps bring about a positive change to the localities that they visit. I agree that it requires a certain mindset for the traveller to choose such kind of a holiday, but who would not? It’s all about connecting with the people and spreading the word among them. After all, it is all for a noble cause. I might be overly positive about this and this might not pick up pace in the near future but it definitely has the reason to entice travellers and turn the tide in its favour! Fingers crossed!
3. Local communities get a chance to interact with the world beyond their microcosm. They get a chance to showcase their culture and traditions. They feel good about the appreciation that they get from the travellers and more so from the acceptance that they get. It should be noted that these are the communities that have long embraced the nature and the very basic way of living. While most of the world has moved to a very materialistic way of living, these folks have retained a way of life which has hardly changed since millenniums. There is no doubt in my mind that these communities, if given a chance, would feel delighted to share their world with the travellers. The sense of pride associated with it is phenomenal!
4. Finally, the very important part of enjoying nature as it is without taking away much from it. The only thing that an Eco-traveler takes back is the good memory and feeling that his/her stay did not bother the nature much. In these times today when the world is abuzz with “environmental awareness” travel should not be left behind and the focus on green-travel becomes all the more important. Good practices like LNT (Leave No Trace), minimizing camp-fire impact, banned use of plastics and polythene etc. ensure that environment is least impacted by tourist activities. Responsible tourism entails the tourists to be equally responsible towards the contribution that they make to maintain the sanctity of the area they visit. If all outdoor ethics are followed, there’s every reason for the travelers to feel great about the fact that their travel didn't negatively impact the environment.

Kumaon Himalayas - A view from Binsar

So finally, it seemed like the right thing to do. Probably the something that i was searching for had been found. I’m finally on the road to develop a “responsible-tourism” program in the Kumaon Himalayas. I’m glad that I could decide what I wanted to do and am happy with my choice. Blending my love for the mountains, a want to do something towards community upliftment and also bringing people close to the Himalayan way of life, it could not have been better than this!