On Becoming A Climate Nomad

On becoming a climate nomad in the unfortunate year of our climate collapse 2023, I find myself bracing the monsoon along the plains of northern India.

Buddha is said to have regularly taken refuge from each monsoon, as monks do today, in places such as Shravasti, Uttar Pradesh. It makes sense to stay put in a cosy monastery while the weather makes life outside treacherous and inhospitable. But the day I drive by Shravasti, it’s dry, and I’d rather keep going until I get to a higher altitude away from the heat of the plains.

I’m driving my bike towards Himachal Pradesh, when everyone one I’ve met in the last few days has warned:

“Tim don’t go to Himachal Pradesh, it’s not safe, at least not for a month from now.”

Yes, I’d seen the news, the videos of buildings, highways and bridges melting into a turgid torrent, consumed and swept downriver. Yet, as an overlander you learn when to listen and when to ignore the noise, finding your own path to the truth.

I was desperate to get out of the overwhelming heat in the plains of the Punjab and climb the heights of Himachal to fairer climes. It occurred to me at this moment:

“I’m desperately looking for a sweet spot between boiling plains and torrential rains, does that make me a climate nomad?!”

When embarking on my global motorcycle journey investigating indigenous games culture back in 2003, I had little concern about the environment, after all I was but a thirty-ish London based computer games developer, flashing my ego, without a care in the world. Then, soon after I arrived in Africa 2004, not finding the fanfare of wildlife I’d been expecting and instead a rather dismal display of tired cattle and other sorrowfully labouring domesticated creatures, I realised “Life On Earth” was nothing like the beautiful BBC productions presented to me by broadcasting hero David Attenborough, that I’d revered growing up as a boy. I learnt, like the TV production teams of this ilk, you have to spend a lot of money and travel much further to find the oases of ever receeding untouched natural wilderness.

As a novice videographer and travel blogger, I had unwittingly become an early form of “digital nomad”, working with data locally or remotely as I moved from place to place. Back then online video and social media were nascent technologies and I was recording onto MiniDV cassette tapes. How antiquated and clunky that all seems now, but at least it kept me on the road and under roofs. A few years prior and the lifestyle of a “nomade numérique” just wouldn’t have been possible in the way it has become today.

Since my hobby researching local games involved seeking out indigenous peoples, I also witnessed how the dramatic loss of habitat and wildlife had impoverished indigenous communities, to the point that their livelihoods and way of life had become as bland and broken as the environment we had thrust upon them. When I was driving south through Brazil in 2012, I saw with my own eyes, that stark divide between freshly chopped grazing land to the east of me, and tall virgin Amazon forest to my west. As I balanced along this environmental guillotine, I surmised that indigenous groups who lived here and throughout the world, had been fighting on the front line against the machinations of global capitalism ever since the colonial invaders descended from their galleons. And yet, even now, centuries later, the battle over dwindling indigenous lands and resources rage on, just fought out using different tactics, though in some places they’re still using the same old methods of violence, rape, pillage, torture, massacre etc. Indigenous people can never let their guard down as peril awaits at every change in national government presiding over their lands with periodically broken so called “treaties” and amendments to alien “law”. So no wonder I, a British white male, was often met with great scepticism. Nevertheless, through all this devastation, I encountered many positive stories of restoration and regeneration on my travels; from curriculum instatement of Mapuche language, establishment of Maya living museums and radio stations, land reclamation for first nations in various countries. These people are fighting still, and whilst battles over land and rights are both won and lost, there is progress, but it’s a tough and relentless fight. Even if it might appear a losing battle at times, it’s a future still worth fighting for, because there is everything to lose otherwise.

In the meantime the fossil fuels extracted from indigenous lands have stuffed up the planet’s ability to regulate weather and temperature at a level inhospitable to humans. The cycle of heatwaves, forest fires, typhoons, floods, ocean warming and more are all cascading on top of us.

In this unfortunate year of our climate collapse 2023, I have had to contend with climate catastrophe directly, at least if only from arm’s length. Climate troubles had, until now, always been something happening somewhere else I might have visited already or wouldn’t be visiting at all. But then, last year the monsoon hit Pakistan like never before, a place on my intended route home, and this year I’m in the monsoon of India which is belting down harder than ever, destroying more than ever.

I’ve just stopped under the shelter of a remote petrol station along with other local bikers to wait out a particularly hard downpour. The futility of squeezing the water from my gloves dawns upon me as the others look on, we’re all just wondering if we’ll make it to our respective destinations before dark.

There’s nothing new about rain in a monsoon, that’s to be expected of course, but the increased volume of water in shorter periods of time is a growing concern. Year on year, more homes, businesses and infrastructure damaged beyond repair, the cost to living a sedentary life becomes less viable.

The word “unprecedented” has become one of news’ most commonly used adjectives, as every single day of our year breaks a new record. All the science is telling me that this year is particularly special for climate as ocean swell with the greatest surge in heat since records began, and land surface temperatures soar to the highest on record, rains plunge many into floods in places previously unseen, and that’s before El Nino has got properly underway, so look out 2024 it’s going to be rough.

As a nomad I can do what nomads do best, pick up sticks and move to a sweeter spot, others, pretty much most other people, lead a sedentary life, as has been the case for the last 10-15k years or so. The population has little choice but to stick it out and hope for the best, come what may. I read that 30% of Pakistan’s population were forced to evacuate their homes last year and that they might not be able to return for months because the heatwave preceding the monsoon had baked the ground so hard the floods would not seep through as quickly as they might normally do. That’s an untenable situation, you just can’t live like that, at least not a sedentary life. Climate refugees are on the move because they have no choice, whereas I’m a happy-go-lucky, privileged climate nomad hopping on and off my fossil fueled ride wherever I pick and choose.

“It’s only going to get worse” I keep telling everyone I meet.

“Listen to the science, don’t expect any of this to relent under our current leadership” I rant.

It’s easy to be a harbinger of doom from where I’m sitting, but so much harder for those who need to make ruthless decisions about uprooting a sedentary lifestyle. Besides, we can’t all just move closer to the poles along the extinction escalator, can we ? We evolved to move and migrate with the seasons, like all the other animals on the planet, but our modern societies and national boundaries make that practically impossible now, only the more privileged can select to spend a season in their location of choice. Whilst to my peers I’m a relative pauper of no fixed abode, I can at least move between climate catastrophes as I ride a wave of climate sweet spots. I scrutinise weather patterns, topography, altitude, temperatures, weigh urbanisation against rural areas to hazard a guess as to where the hazards may lay in wait, to avoid them and select the more hospitable spaces in which to speculate.

I’ve just reached my target, Bir, a rural community with a smattering of Royal Enfield motorcycle riding Tibetan monk refugees, coupled with a growing tourism in treks and paragliding. For a moment I think of Fred Stockwell, a paragliding pioneer I’d met helping Burmese refugees in Mae Sot, Thailand.

“Brother, a true kindred spirit” as he liked to dub me,

I’m certain he would have liked it here, halfway up the first range of Himalayan mountains, a breath of fresh air and mysterious tendrils of mist that finger their way down through the forests.

Amid the numerous small scale construction sites adding a floor or annex to existing homestays, I unmount to walk in search of an idyllic farm stay. Along the myriad of moss-covered farmland pathways I came across a group of sombre looking people and asked a man walking my way;

“Is this a funeral?”

“Yes, it is, for a man I knew who was working in the next valley, he woke to alert others of a landslide, saving them but being crushed by a tree himself.”

He was referring to the Beas River Valley, that all reports warned not to venture, and to which I’d paid heed. The sullen man went on to say;

“They have all those troubles because there is too much development without safeguards for soil erosion, here in Bir we don’t have all that development.”

Everyone I meet in this area is fully aware of their great luck on the spinning wheel at the climate casino. Only today a fellow customer at a bike repair shop explained how happy he was to have moved back here from the mayhem of Delhi, to his hometown in this wonderful climate of rich arable land.

“My life is completely stress free as I work remotely for our clients processing medical records for patients in USA” he sighed with great relief.

I was elated to hear a local person had figured out a way to beat the tractor-beam of city life and make a decisive run for the hills.

Which just goes to show, you probably can’t be a climate nomad without also being a digital nomad.

At the outset I learnt to navigate the world with compass, paper maps, the sun, moon, stars and directions from locals. Along came google maps and social media to ruin it, but this at least I could opt out of.

Motorcyclists are good at finding the sweet spots on dirt roads to avoid pot holes, corrugations or worse, and since being on the move we can also navigate the climate.

So whilst I’ve been a digital nomad since 2003, it seems I could also dub myself a climate nomad, dodging dodgy weather situations resulting in catastrophe and inhospitable living conditions.

Humans evolved to migrate with seasons, but our sedentary lives have culminated in such a disconnect that we are being rudely driven out of our homes onto the streets without mercy from the heavens. Our sedentary lifestyles and national borders leave us ill prepared for what is now upon us. Millions of migrating humans will be an unstoppable force of desperate people all seeking a sweet spot to cling onto.

Watch out world, the climate nomads are coming.