Internships are not restricted to office work. Early in the summer of 2023, Grace Snyder, a coxswain on the women's rowing team, traveled to the most populous nation in the world, India, all the way up North near the borders of Pakistan and China. She found a challenging climate life (more than two miles above sea level) and a completely new culture and way of in a region that wanted to focus on building sustainable tourism, as she tells here.

This is the first of a series of Q&As on University of Rochester student-athletes' internship experiences authored by Dennis O'Donnell.

Some internships may take you across the country. Yours took you halfway around the world – to the town of Ladakh, India.  Where is that?
Ladakh is a union territory of India, with the actual city being Leh, and it's far up by India's northern border. It is surrounded by the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, and it borders Pakistan and China. The actual borders of the region are in constant dispute between the neighboring countries, so they have an insane military presence in the area.

How long did it take you to travel there?
It was quite the journey. Leaving from Boston, it took about 13 hours to get to Abu Dhabi, and then another 3 ½ hours on a connecting flight to get to Delhi. There are no international flights to Ladakh, so you must land in a domestic city in India and fly from there. Once in Delhi, it only took about an hour on Air India to reach Ladakh's only airport in the city of Leh. Definitely, the longest journey I had ever been on!

How many people made the trip?
There were three other undergraduates on the team, making four of us total. We were accompanied by Dr. Nancy Chin, who was our faculty leader and a long-time traveler to Ladakh. She has been doing work there for years.

What kind of living arrangements were available to you?
In Ladakh, there are three main living arrangements available: hotels, guest houses, and homestays. Hotels are the most expensive and have the typical services you'd expect a hotel to have. The locals have learned to Westernize their hotel setups to attract and keep tourists since tourism is a main sector of their economy. Homestays are somewhat equivalent to hostels: you live with a local family, usually in a surrounding village outside the city, and they provide you with a place to sleep and some meals. You are directly integrated into their house and are living the way they live. We stayed in a guest house, which I would say is a happy medium. A local family lives in the house with you, but the house was specifically built to accommodate hosting multiple guests, so it has single bedrooms and bathrooms and such. Similar to hotels, a lot of guest houses have westernized features, like flush toilets and overhead showers. At a homestay, you would be using dirt toilets and bucking bathing, just like the locals of the area do. Dr. Chin was very well acquainted with the family we stayed with, and it was a wonderful experience. They treated us like family, and the breakfast we got every morning was unbelievable! 

Were there any language difficulties?
Our group was extremely lucky to have Ladakhi community partners who spoke both English and Ladakhi (and oftentimes Hindi) to help us overcome any language barriers. Without them, the entire trip would have been much more difficult. Most people in the main city area spoke at least proficient English, but when we went to interview locals in rural communities, they strictly spoke Ladakhi. We had our Ladakhi partners to help us with translation. 

We worked with a group of students from the local college for the entirety of the trip and did the research side by side, so we were pretty much never without a translator. Even though many townspeople spoke English, it was invaluable to have Ladakhi speakers help us order at restaurants or get directions. Especially since Ladakhi is such a niche language that Google Translate doesn't even offer it as an option. We couldn't have done it without them! 

This was organized by the University's Public Health Department. What did your group do and how much travel did you have in-country?
Every year, Dr. Chin has two field sites that she visits and brings students. One is in her native region of Italy, Borca di Cadore and the other is in Ladakh, India. Since she has over a decade's worth of community partnerships in each area, she works with community partners at both sites to assess what it is that they need help working on at a community level. This year, the topic at hand for both sites was sustainable tourism, and we were tasked with working with the Ladakhi government to create a data-driven policy around making tourism a culturally and environmentally sustainable practice. This was done through interviewing, survey piloting, and working with the community to build datasets that we could analyze so that we could work with government officials to turn data into policy to benefit the area. We did not travel in the country prior; we met as a group for the semester before we left for the field site, but the only traveling we did was to leave the US and get to India. 

What were the living and health conditions of the people who lived there?
From what we saw, the health conditions were fine for the population that we surveyed. We weren't targeting groups of sick individuals or seeking community members for any questions revolving around poor health or living conditions, so my view of the region's health is under-informed in that sense. Their medical technology and preventative health measures are different from what you'd find in the United States, but for the most part, the people there live simply and sustainably, many being homesteaders and agricultural workers who get exercise every day in the fields and eat homegrown and handmade food for each meal. I noticed in villages that there was usually no running water (hence the bucket baths and washing hands and dishes in the glacial runoff streams that ran through the village), and there were some kitchens that lacked proper stove ventilation systems (which are usually mandated in the US for respiratory safety). For the most part, we saw people living in decent health, both rural and urban. I think had we gone in with a different research question and sought out other populations, my takeaways would have been different. 

India is the most populous country on earth with over 1.428 billion people (three million more than China). How much of a role does that play in living and health conditions?
Speaking from my general knowledge of health outcomes in populus areas, it can play a large role. The more populated a country, the harder it is to stop rapid spread of communicable disease, eradicate poverty, combat hunger and malnutrition, and make sure healthcare and education systems are distributed throughout the area. Also, India is extremely divided between the rich and the poor population, and there are still remnants of the caste system that play into societal roles. All of these factors can lead to inequitable health resources and health outcomes in the region. 

The UR group spent the Spring 2023 semester preparing, then spent one month overseas in the summer. What did the preparation entail?
Any time you travel to a community to perform ethnographic research, it is crucial that you learn about the culture, area, and its people before you visit. Going in blind would be ignorant, delay the research process, and leave gaps in knowledge that could harm your analysis of the question you're trying to answer. We spent the semester before traveling learning about the region and the people through books, articles, and podcasts, and we read a lot of focused readings on sustainability in tourism and what that means. Dr. Chin also spent time going over what ethnographic research entails, how to conduct it, and the mindset we should try to be in while there. 

You spent the Fall 2023 semester reviewing the data you found. Were there any surprises?
I think the most surprising part to me was how different the opinions on tourism were throughout the region; coding our interviews is still ongoing, and narrowing down what we want to focus on in our findings feels nearly impossible with all of the opinions we unearthed. I was also shocked by the strong negative views that a majority of our participants held towards domestic tourists, or tourists from India. Most of our interviews yielded opinions that international tourists, while naive, tended to care a lot more about the culture and the region than tourists from India do, and the resentment towards domestic tourists was quite astounding and consistent. 

I was also shocked at how many locals knew about tourism's damaging impacts but had to balance their concerns with knowing that tourism is a crucial part of the economy. Before the region opened to tourism, the majority lived in poverty. Locals knew way more than international or domestic tourists about tourism's impact on the region, but even while experiencing its destructive tendencies firsthand, many saw it as a necessary evil and just hoped that it could be managed better. 

You have a double major - Biology and Health Policy. Did this trip strengthen your resolve to pursue that field after graduation? What are you leaning toward right now? Will you return to India, go to a graduate school, etc?
This trip honestly sparked what I've been calling my "health policy kick." I chose to double major because I wanted to pursue my desire to help enhance the health of entire communities (public health) without giving up the science that I find invaluable and extremely compelling (biology), and in my mind, having biology would give me a better backing and understanding to some health-related concepts that come up in public health. Plus, a biology degree would give me an avenue into research if I felt so inclined to pursue that. After this summer, I'm pretty sure I want to start off my career more geared in the public health/health policy direction, which means getting involved in field work projects, harm prevention and reduction, etc. I would love to help collect data for policy influence for the CDC or an equivalent governmental body. I will most definitely return to India at some point, but whether I do research there or not will depend on the opportunities I find. Regardless, I'm pretty resolute in taking my career abroad at some point; India opened up my entire worldview!
 
If you had a friend who was contemplating traveling to Ladakh, what would you tell them to expect?
I would tell them to expect one of the most magical landscapes, along with severe shortness of breath, intense and dry weather, street cows, some incredibly impressive bargainers at the market, and some of the best and freshest food they have probably ever had. Along with some of the most gentle people. The altitude is no joke; if you fly right from Delhi, you go from 0 to 12,000 feet in an hour. I would highly recommend eating light upon arrival (stomach sickness is expected) and taking Diamox to help with altitude symptoms. You will also feel like you're in the worst shape of your life; walking up a single flight of stairs is enough to take you out. The air is super thin! Depending on the time of year, the weather varies dramatically. Even in the summer, when it climbs up to 75-80 degrees max, you are so close to the sun that the UV can be near 10 to 12 on any given day. Markets are filled with strong-willed salesmen and women who know how to work through a tourist, and the food in the region is worlds apart from traditional Indian food. It has a very heavy Tibetan influence and is so incredibly tasty. But the locals you'll meet will treat you like family. 

What made the University attractive as a place to compete athletically as well as study?
The university seemed to offer a plethora of resources to all students, including athletes, to help them keep up their extracurricular lives while achieving high academic goals at a prestigious university. I was compelled by the sheer number of resources and opportunities offered that I felt I could capitalize on even with having a majority of my free time dedicated to a sport. I loved the DIII model, for it allows athletic influence in my college experience, but it doesn't morph athletics into a dominating factor of my time here. Crew can very much just be a part of my life and not my entire identity and I still have time to participate in other on-and-off campus opportunities and strive for my double degree. It seemed like the U of R offered the perfect package!

Will you be a coxswain again this Spring?
Absolutely! I don't know life on campus without it. Spring is our race season, so I'm super excited!