How it all began...

Well over a year ago I heard about the Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowships. One of the presenters at the Scottish Arctic Club slideshow gave a talk about his trip to Greenland to visit the original Inuit kayak builders there. Another friend went to America to study science communication methods after her PhD. A close friend of the family had had a fellowship to look at the role of women in science in engineering. It seemed that a lot of people I mentioned it to could recall a friend, or friend of a friend who had taken advantage of this fantastic funding opportunity. So obviously I applied. My original application talked about visiting Alaska, Eastern Canada and Mexico. By the time the interview came round I had toned this down to visiting Eastern Canada in September/October - about the end of their tourist season. This seemed like a good place to go as it would have climatic, social and economic similarities to Scotland. Unfortunately (and I should have anticipated this!) I got bogged down in the minutiae of finishing off my PhD. I submitted within a week of going to Disko Island, West Greenland so suddenly it was the end of August, my viva was scheduled for mid-September and I hadn't even thought about the Winston Churchill Fellowship. Realistically, it seemed that the earliest I would be able to travel would be January or February. After a month in Greenland I was itching to go back to the Arctic - but in January? No-one but me (and my supportive family) seemed to think that this would be a great plan. Won't it be cold and dark? I was forced to agree. Google turned up something called the Return of the Sun festival, held in a place called Igloolik. However, I could barely find any more information about it other than that it was an ancient ceremony revived in modern times by the Inuit Elders to try and keep their traditions alive. Even the tourist office I emailed in the Nunavut capital had never heard of it and were very discouraging of my intention to visit in January. One of the few hits on Google was a weblog. Jennifer and Ian (www.nunablog.ca) are teachers who moved to Igloolik several years ago. They went to the Return of the Sun festival last year and wrote it up on their blog. I wrote a comment on their blog asking about the celebration, Jennifer emailed back, and the next thing I knew I had an invitation to stay in Igloolik. Opportunities like that just have to be taken! Google also found me a cross country ski trip in Cree territory. Skiing every day with talks and demonstrations of traditional hunting, survival and cooking methods sounded like a suitably fun way to learn about a different sort of tourism experience. The owners of an ecolodge in Temogami, Ontario were also happy for me to come and learn about how their business operates. In fact, Caryn suggested that rather than staying for a few days as a guest, I could stay in staff accommodation and help out for as long as I liked. Those three components should occupy me happily from the beginning of January to part way through February. Then I've got another 10 days or so until my flight back to the UK on the 21st of February. I'm hoping that talking to people on the way will throw up new ideas of things to do, people to see and places to visit which will fill that extra time. So that's the plan... I'll just have to wait and see how it all works out.