What do we do?

People ask us: "what do you do?". What is that clear single statement that defines you? We often fall short of words or rather, the right words to define what The Green Locus does. We try to answer by making use of several key words that define us, words that define our passion - responsible, experiences, community, eco, locals, authentic, sustainability and what not. Over time, we've come to realize that it is difficult to frame what we do in one statement. We have, over the course of a year and half, touched so many different aspects of tourism, community and development together that it is hard to say if we are a travel-focused firm or a NGO or a social enterprise. 

We had started with an aim to create local Himalayan travel experiences for travelers, by following a community engagement model and sustainable tourism practices. This seemed easy to explain. But our work area has not stayed confined to the realms of these words. In fact, it now seems like that we were just about touching the tip of the iceberg that is waiting to slowly reveal itself with time. Over the time of our existence the iceberg has revealed more of itself and we are in awe of what we have achieved so far; we have explored numerous un-spoilt virgin villages and towns, met beautiful-spirited locals, lived with them, educated people on the potential of sustainable living, introduced individuals, groups, corporates and schools to responsible tourism, volunteered to improve the education methods being used in the local schools, taught needy students, bridged the gap between the needy and the resourceful through voluntourism, researched on indigenous environment friendly construction practices, introduced Indians and foreigners to the Himalayas and the Himalayan way of living. The discoveries have been phenomenal. It has been quite a journey for us. We have come to believe quite profoundly that the world is a wonderful place when you experience it first hand, rather than just seeing it. A firsthand experience of a place you visit is complete only when you try to feel and absorb it. When you shed your inhibitions, open your mind and are ready to just let go, you will start feeling a place. That’s the end of seeing and the start of experiencing. When you go out into the wild with a hill-woman to collect fodder for her cattle, milk a cow (and realize how tough a job it is), prepare those smoke-kissed chapattis to drool by, walk out to the school with the local kids and realize how they tread the long and tiresome route with ease and a smile on their faces, teach the local kids and share their happiness, cook and eat with the locals, and when you embrace nature and a natural way of living, you find that life has much simpler yet satisfying rewards to be experienced.

Some people knock down the notion of such an experience by questioning the benefit. Our answer to them is, if it were to be an experience that could be measured in dollars, it would have been grossly available as commodity to be purchased and people would be buying and consuming it like hotcakes. The matter of fact remains that such experiences cannot be measured monetarily. If at all there was a measure for quantifying such an experience, it would perhaps be the number of lives that you have touched, the number of people that you have interacted with, the number of new discoveries that you have made along the way and most importantly by the change in how you perceive the world and yourself. 

We recently hosted a lady from Los Angeles named Laura in one of our homestays in Almora. She was there to partake in a voluntourism initiative to teach at a local school for a month. This was her first visit to India and we can understand the anxiety and the agony one faces while making a visit to the (so called) third world from a western country. She visited us nevertheless. Thinking about the time that she spent with the local Kumauni family in living like they do and participating in their daily life, we can make certain guesses with hopefully a good level of accuracy about how she would have felt during the course of her stay. I guess this is how her mood would have changed from the beginning of her experience to the end –cautious -> optimistic -> letting-go -> opening-up -> participatory -> happy -> elated. In the end, her decision to visit India and live with the village folks paid off, for her, for the family that hosted her and not to forget the students that she taught. Her farewell was a testimonial to her stay, it was one emotional experience. Both her and the family were in tears; tears of love, respect and acceptance. Ask her (and the local family) about what benefit she got from the experience and she would gladly say “connections” – ones of the heart and soul, the ones which humble you and make you a true world citizen. Anyway, the point was that such experiences help in broadening perspective about the world that we live in. It is such experiences, that The Green Locus wants to create and provide to the global community of responsible travelers. We are working with a few different villages and households to create more such experiences in the Himalayan regions of India. We have now entered Leh-Ladakh, are partnering in Himanchal, have a good presence in Uttarakhand and have plans of moving to the North-East.

And finally, wishing that everybody traveling could follow Cesare Pavese's travel philosophy: “If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears”

Indeed, the right ingredients for discovering the world and discovering yourself! 

PS: The Green Locus helps put all these ingredients together to create beautiful Himalayan experiences for travelers.