Delighted to make the cover-feature (top-less no less) of Canada’s award-winning Outpost Magazine in the current edition. Our journey last year along the Route of Wind and Wool, tracing the ancient Himalayan pathways by foot is the focus.
Expedition Ladakh, Jeff Fuchs
Another of the great mountain’s unheralded routes gets a little light shone on it with some emphasis on the glaciers, which continue to ‘bleed’ and disappear. Our ‘expedition Ladakh’, known more accurately as the Route of Wind and Wool (both of which thrive up in the mountains) was an odyssey as much into the suffering mountains as they were along a timeless route of commodities.
Indeed, it was the glaciers (and the elusive snow leopard) that were occupying the mind during much of this journey. A few years ago, according to a local, glaciers like the one above were “covered in white“. Now, “The mountains I knew as white, my son has only known as black and snowless“.
About JeffFuchs
Bio
Having lived for most of the past decade in Asia, Fuchs’ work has centered on indigenous mountain cultures, oral histories with an obsessive interest in tea. His photos and stories have appeared on three continents in award-winning publications Kyoto Journal, TRVL, and Outpost Magazine, as well as The Spanish Expedition Society, The Earth, Silkroad Foundation, The China Post Newspaper, The Toronto Star, The South China Morning Post and Traveler amongst others. Various pieces of his work are part of private collections in Europe, North America and Asia and he serves as the Asian Editor at Large for Canada’s award-winning Outpost magazine.
Fuchs is the Wild China Explorer of the Year for 2011 for sustainable exploration of the Himalayan Trade Routes. He recently completed a month long expedition a previously undocumented ancient nomadic salt route at 4,000 metres becoming the first westerner to travel the Tsa’lam ‘salt road’ through Qinghai.
Fuchs has written on indigenous perspectives for UNESCO, and has having consulted for National Geographic. Fuchs is a member of the fabled Explorers Club, which supports sustainable exploration and research.
Jeff has worked with schools and universities, giving talks on both the importance of oral traditions, tea and mountain cultures. He has spoken to the prestigious Spanish Geographic Society in Madrid on culture and trade through the Himalayas and his sold out talk at the Museum of Nature in Canada focused on the enduring importance of oral narratives and the Himalayan trade routes.
His recently released book ‘The Ancient Tea Horse Road’ (Penguin-Viking Publishers) details his 8-month groundbreaking journey traveling and chronicling one of the world’s great trade routes, The Tea Horse Road. Fuchs is the first westerner to have completed the entire route stretching almost six thousand kilometers through the Himalayas a dozen cultures.
He makes his home in ‘Shangrila’, northwestern Yunnan upon the eastern extension of the Himalayan range where tea and mountains abound; and where he leads expeditions the award winning ‘Tea Horse Road Journey’ with Wild China along portions of the Ancient Tea Horse Road.
To keep fueled up for life Fuchs co-founded JalamTeas which keeps him deep in the green while high in the hills.
Every man, once in his lifetime, has to take the road from Srinagar to Leh. Jeff, i did that in 1986.
Now I’m interested in a journey/trek from Kashgar to Lhasa. Been to both places but not from one to the other. Any interest in a personal guiding trip?
Thank you.
Brendan,
I’ve send on a response to your email address – let me know if you do in face receive it.
Jeff