Among them was British rock climber and writer Professor Terry Gifford.[break]
Born and raised in Cambridge, he fell in love with rock climbing at the young age of 16. “I went along with a Boys Scout group to Sheffield, and my love affair with mountains began,” he shared.
Tall, strongly built, jolly and now 64 years of age, Gifford has authored six collections of poetry besides other volumes of essays on mountains. He worked as the director of the annual International Festival of Mountaineering Literature for 21 years which was organized at the University of Leeds, UK.
He currently chairs the British Mountain Heritage Trust, and was one among the three jury members at KIMFF.
“I watched all the 26 films a week before I arrived in Nepal and was impressed,” he said. This is Gifford’s second visit to Nepal. He came here last year and trekked to the Gokyo Valley in the Khumbu region.
“The trek was wonderful. The mountains were higher and the weather very different from what I had experienced. But I realized that I undertook the trek 10 years too late,” he said, laughingly.
Currently a visiting Professor at the University of Chichester, UK and Professor Honorario at the University of Alicante, Spain, he has been infusing students with the love of nature for the past few decades. “I believe that it’s a personal thing to love mountains. I usually take my students on a week’s residential visit to the Lake District in UK and let them interact directly with nature.
“I encourage them to study mountains and explore them at the same time. Sometimes I teach them Romantic Poetry in the rain and ask them to churn out their creations by feeling the rain drench them,” he shared.
He believes that it’s important for students to build their own connection with mountains and in their own pace. “They need to be the ones exploring new cultures and bonding with mountains.”
The Professor has traveled widely, exploring mountains in Europe and North America. “As my roots suggest, I should be a lover of flatlands and big skies but I got obsessed with steep slopes and rocks,” he said.
Mt Blencathra, situated in the Lake District of UK, is his favorite mountain. “It’s sharply glaciated with open moors and rugged in the true sense. It’s not populated like other mountains,” he disclosed.
Besides being in KIMFF jury, Gifford instructed seven participants at the three-day writing workshop held at the festival, entitled, “Write Mountains: Writing Workshop.” He presented a slideshow about the eccentricities of British rock climbing on December 12 at the Nepal Tourism Board and has been lecturing at Tribhuvan University about his poetry.
Related story
11 metric tons of garbage including 4 dead bodies collected fro...
-1200x560-1779450784.webp)
