Paper Short Abstract:

Emergent from a comparative and collaborative project on Himalayan elders’ experiences in an era of unprecedented migration, this paper explores possibilities – inclusive of but beyond ethnographic writing – for distilling and sharing what was learned through engaging a group of elders in a Buddhist pilgrimage as a method for learning about their lived experiences as well as their hopes and fears about growing old.

Paper Abstract:

This paper emerges from an ongoing, three-year comparative and collaborative research project being conducted in Nepal’s districts of Mustang (Lo and Baragaon) and Gorkha (Nubri, and Tsum) as well as in Kathmandu,and among diasporic communities from these regions living in greater New York City. Set against the reality that, in many places on this planet, we are getting older, and that global population aging is increasing in intensity while the structures human communities have relied upon for generations to care for the elderly are cracking and shifting, this project asks: How do individuals, families, communities, and institutions adapt to demographic and socioeconomic changes to allow people to age in a culturally appropriate manner? Taking seriously the understanding that engaging in Buddhist pilgrimage remains a component of what it means to age “successfully” and prepare for eventual death and rebirth in a Himalayan cultural context, we facilitated a week-long pilgrimage from Mustang to Kathmandu with a group of eight elders as an ethnographic method to learn about their life experiences as well as their hopes and fears about aging. At the same time, pilgrimage-as-method presented our research team with opportunities to embody an ethics of care grounded in Himalayan concepts of merit (sonam) and benefit (phentok). We also engaged in multimodal documentation practices that included conventional fieldnotes, still photography, videography, and semi-structured group interviews. This paper explores possibilities – inclusive of but beyond ethnographic writing – for distilling and sharing what was learned from this shared and embodied experience.