Autoethnography: Impressions of Time Spent near the Holy Yamuna River

This is an autoethnographic look at life along the Yamuna River and the tributary rivers Hiranyabahu and Aglad, in the Himalayan foothills of Uttarakhand, India.

"Autoethnography is an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze personal experience in order to understand cultural experience. This approach challenges canonical ways of doing research and representing others and treats research as a political, socially-just and socially-conscious act. A researcher uses tenets of autobiography and ethnography to do and write autoethnography. Thus, as a method, autoethnography is both process and product." (Ellis, Adams, & Bochner, 2011, abstract)

I present this as a narrative related to five dérives, or drifts, I did throughout the area in June 2022, while I was living with local villagers in a chatti (guesthouse) in Janki Chatti, Sainji Gaon, and Banglo Ki Kandi villages in Uttarakhand, India.

The results of the study are housed on my blog site at: https://yamunadeepmap.blogspot.com/2022/07/autoethnography-impressions-of-time.html

Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Forum: Qualitative Social Research Sozialforschung, 12(1). http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/1589/3095