From Within a Community

Over the course of four months, I had the privilege of immersing myself in a local, rural community in Amer, India. Through working as a photography teacher, community development organizer, and basketball missionary, I was able to get past the numerous - often invisible - boundaries that distance many like me from integrating into a vastly different circle of life. I was able to engage and interact with this community in a much deeper and more profound way than any of my previous travels, and this atypical relationship with this foreign community allowed me to better understand the new environment in which I was in. Ultimately, the rooted integration that resulted from me incurring responsibility and identity in the community provided me with a more enriching and meaningful cultural experience.

This book is a reflection and insight into my experiences with the people, buildings, and ‘animals’ of Amer. I hope that this reading will challenge, in both positive and negative ways, your current conception of India. Equally important, my goal is to encourage you to travel to new places to see them for yourself, in ways that mirror a more entrenched connection to local environments such as the ones described in this book.

This is not an ethnography on India - it remains a travel memoir - but what makes it special is the different perspective I was able to gain due to my responsibilities there, and that is the most important lesson to be learned from my book; this type of cultural immersion is something other people can emulate, and if done, will enrich both their personal travel experiences and the lives of those they interact with while traveling.