Dirtbag Grant

Patagonia something called the dirtbag grant where they give money to loly travelers who embody the spirit of a dirtbag. My travel companions and I filled out this application and I thought that I would attach it here so you can getter a better insight into "why" Tibet if you're so interested.

TIBET OR BUST!!
This April, three friends will be embarking on an incredible journey to one of the most remote areas on the planet: Tibet. For five weeks these three women will be immersed in an utterly different culture, one based upon the principles of Buddhism and compassion towards one another. From the Potala Palace in Lhasa to sacred Mount Kailash in western Tibet, we will travel expedition-style and practice self-reliance as we explore as much as we can of the Land of Snow.
The three of us are choosing to visit Tibet at this time due to the recent completion of the railroad linking Lhasa with the Chinese rail system. Lhasa, at one time known as the Forbidden City, now receives up to hundreds of travelers every day and the culture of Tibet is changing rapidly. Tibetan monasteries, villages, and way of life are all disappearing, and therefore we wish to visit this country while some aspects of traditional Tibetan life still endure.
In addition to experiencing the beauty and culture of Tibet, our secondary objective is to summit a mountain in the area near Lhasa. The experience that we can gain with both mountaineering and high altitude travel is something that we cannot pass up while we visit Tibet.

Describe the prior experience of each team member as it relates to the objective of this trip:

Marya, Justinn and Meredith met and became friends as instructors for the North Carolina Outward Bound School. Meredith’s pertinent prior experience includes previous travel to foreign countries (Argentina, Botswana, Australia), mountaineering training in Patagonia, as well as extensive trip-leading and backpacking experience. Justinn spent five weeks in South Africa facilitating adventure races for South African college students before joining NCOBS. Marya has spent many months traveling and mountaineering in South America (Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru) and leading long, wilderness-based expeditions to locations in Guatemala, Canada and the US.

Explain the environmental activism and cultural components of your trip:

As backcountry travelers who spend more nights under the stars than under a roof, the three of us strive to practice good Leave No Trace techniques everywhere we go, from the wilderness to our own backyards. Recently Meredith was talking to a friend who spent some time in Tibet, and he angrily described how Chinese tourists routinely trash the places they travel through. According to Brian, tour buses pull over in meadows to allow passengers to eat their box lunches; when the buses resume their journey, plastic lids and food waste are left all over the ground. It saddened him that visitors to such a pristine and beautiful land would have so little regard for the landscape and inhabitants.
If there is one thing that OB instructors know how to do for the environment, it’s pick up trash. On every course we work, we teach our students the principles of LNT (and end up picking up their micro-trash after them, too). So it was a no-brainer that we would incorporate these practices into our trip to Tibet. We feel that the very least we can do is to leave the Roof of the World cleaner than we found it. As Chinese and Western travelers visit Tibet more and more frequently, proper stewardship of the environment is increasingly critical.
There are so many places worth visiting in Tibet, and with only five weeks to spend there we want to ensure that we get away from the high-traffic areas like Lhasa and experience more authentic Tibetan culture. Therefore we are journeying from Lhasa in the east to the Mount Kailash area in western Tibet. We will hitch-hike, visit and camp at monasteries and villages, and undertake the Mount Kailash Kora, a sacred circumambulation of this holy mountain. Here, in the west, we will put our dirtbag skills and our Tibetan phrasebook to the test as we live and travel in a remote and spectacular area.

What does “do more with less” mean to you and how do you plan to incorporate this into your trip:

Doing more with less can take on many meanings: it can mean accomplishing great things with few resources or adventuring to far-off lands in the most unexpected ways. In the context of our everyday lives it means walking or biking instead of driving, getting more then one cup of tea out of a tea bag, camping instead of staying in a hotel, cooking a Thanksgiving turkey over an open campfire, spending the day on the crag laughing with good friends, and helping others appreciate this way of life so that they, too, may do more with less. We are able to set out on this journey because we have embraced the “do more with less” concept. On our trip to Tibet we’ll take advantage of all the opportunities the country has to offer by taking the road less traveled leading us to remote monasteries and villages. According to Outside Magazine, if we took the traditional tourist route this experience would cost in the range of $10,000 - $13,000 (per person), whereas we are able to visit the same places, and more, for less than a third that cost.

Summarize why you feel your trip embodies the essence of the dirtbag spirit:

Dirtbags are generally thought of as dirty, unclean people. On every North Carolina Outward Bound School Student Questionnaire, one of our questions is whether “going without a shower for weeks” will be “okay”, “hard, but I’ll do it”, or “impossible”. Lots of students choose “impossible”. We are, as OB instructors going to Tibet, dirtbag enthusiasts. We are doing what many of our students may, at first glance, consider impossible. Heck, even our families think we’re crazy. Dirtbags are not sane people. They are adventurous, easygoing, worrying-less-about-the-easy-way-out-and-more-about-the-best-way-through sort of people. We started planning our trip to Tibet while driving home from the French Broad River with a group of students last summer. We were dirty, tired and excited. We were dirtbags. We are dirtbags. And these dirtbags are going to Tibet.