British Secondary Schools Add Michael Palin’s “Himalaya” to Required Reading List
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 03.31.06 | 1:54 PM ET
It’s part of an effort to bring students up to speed on their geography studies, the worst taught subject in British schools, according to the country’s Office for Standards in Education. “You can travel the seas, poles, and deserts and see nothing. To really understand the world you need to get under the skin of people and places. In other words, learn about geography,” said Michael Palin, a member of Monty Python and a well-traveled author, according to a report in the Mirror. “I can’t imagine a more relevant subject. We’d all be lost without it.” In Himalaya
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
Himalayan Archive Foundation 04.17.06 | 3:49 PM ET
This is Himalaya: A Visual Feast
A country located below sea level hosts 70 films and documentaries on the world’s highest mountain region.
The majestic natural beauty of the Himalayan mountain range has inspired awe and religious devotion around the world for millennia. With thirty snowy peaks above 7620 meters, the Himalaya dwarf all other mountains and sprawl 2700 kilometres across India, Pakistan, Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan.
The Himalaya have an abundance of ecological niches, ranging from subtropical to arctic climates, and these mountain habitats support vast quantities of flora and fauna. In the valleys, various ethnic peoples have carved out settlements and continue to eke out an existence in these harsh conditions.
From afar, this image may appear to be eternal, but in reality the Himalaya are anything but unchanging. This film festival shows some of the dynamic changes affecting the area and provide the audience with an intimate knowledge of the landscape and people of the region. This Festival offers you the chance to experience the Himalayan region, to travel beyond the image of the region as it is presented in regular movies and meet the intriguing diversity, and uniqueness of the Himalayas.