THINKERS AND EDUCATORS
Rendezvous with Nick Middleton Leena Satuluri
N
ick Middleton is an award-winning geographer, an acclaimed travel writer, TV presenter, environmental scientist and university lecturer. He is the author of several travel books and has won the Royal Geographical Society's Ness Award in 2002, in recognition of his attempts to increase public enthusiasm for geography through travel writing. His curiosity about how planet Earth works and how people interact with it was fuelled from an early age by his family’s world atlas, Herge’s Adventures of Tintin and an endless flow of Willard Price novels. Now he works and communicates on a wide variety of environmental issues and travel topics for a broad range of audiences, from government policy-makers to primary-school children. He also teaches at the University of Oxford where he is a Fellow of St Anne’s College.
has travelled to more than 90 countries and has highlighted the yearning of 50 “wannabe countries” with his Atlas of Countries that Don’t Exist. An excerpt from his book ‘Extremes along the Silk Road’ has been prescribed for students of Grade 11 (CBSE). His work and adventurous travels sparked an interest in me and my students alike and we were privileged to interview him. We present here some excerpts from our conversation. Vaishnav – With reference to the excerpt from 'Extremes along the silk road', my question to you is – Kora is a religious practice. As an academic to the core, what made you want to do the Kora at Mount Kailash?
Photos courtesy: Leena Satuluri
Nick – Tibet is the largest of all the topographical barriers to transAsian communications. It is referred to as ‘the roof of the world’ and can also be called as the Navel of the Universe. When I reached Lhasa, I saw pilgrims young and old from all over the Tibet. I decided to visit Mount Kailash firstly due to its peculiar geographical status as the fountainhead of four great South Asian rivers and secondly because it is a place of worship to four major religions – Buddhists, Hindus, Jains and followers of the Bon religion (Tibet’s ancient faith). While commercial travellers avoid such topographical obstacles, pious explorers seek it out.
Nick is the author of seven travel books, including the bestseller, Going to Extremes, which accompanied a television series he wrote and presented for Channel 4 and the National Geographic Channel on extreme environments and the people who live in them. His TV documentaries have been broadcast all over the world and his books translated into more than a dozen languages. Nick 46
TEACHER PLUS, SEPTEMBER 2020
Ambica – When you saw multi-coloured sheets of plastic that were made into voluminous shopping bags and sold all over China and other parts of Asia, you mention that 'plastic must rate as one of China's most successful exports along the Silk Road today'? Is that an assumption or are there concrete evidences to support the statement? Nick – It’s a good question. The label for tract of land known as ‘Silk Road’ is a recent one, but has much
