Pad Yatra: A Green Odyssey

摘要

The voice of the subaltern is still drastically underrepresented in discussions of climate change in the West. Pad Yatra: A Green Odyssey goes some way to ameliorating this omission, documenting how climate change is being counteracted by some of the most vulnerable and powerless people in the world. Focusing upon the Gyalwang Drukpa, a Tibetan Buddhist leader, the Pad Yatra is 'a foot journey across the Himalayas, designed to spread a message so powerful it will spawn an unprecedented activist movement across the Himalayas'. Led by this charismatic (and literal) trailblazer, hundreds of people from all over the world have taken part in the march, drawing attention to a range of environmental issues as they go. These include the plastic pollution that has affected even this remote part of the globe, the effects that humans have had on other animals in this delicate ecosystem, as well as the more serious and large-scale effects of climate change. Perhaps most dramatically, the film opens with the sights and sounds of the 2010 Ladakh cloudburst, a flash flood that caused devastation across the region. The remainder of the film documents the Pad Yatra and the adventures of its participants.