Yak Burgers and Black Tea

Consumption, Deprivation, and the Literature of Himalayan Adventure Travel

Bibliographic Data

ID5374565
AuthorsTom Strychacz (Mills College, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume18
Issue3
Pages145-167
Publication date2010-08-16
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueFood and Foodways (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0740-9710 • E-ISSN: 1542-3484
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/07409710.2010.504105
OpenAlexW2028828522
LanguageEN
References cited16

Prominent in the accounts of trekking, mountaineering, and exploration that make up the literature of Himalayan adventure travel are complex descriptions of food consumption: the shock of new foods or no food or the wrong food, different practices of cultivation and food preparation, climbers’ rations, menus designed to optimize performance, and changes in appetite. Focusing on two recent works, Jon Krakauer's well-known Into Thin Air (1997) Krakauer, Jon. 1997. Into Thin Air, New York: Doubleday. [Google Scholar] and Wade Brackenbury's Yak Butter and Black Tea (1997 Brackenbury, Wade. 1997. Yak Butter and Black Tea: A Journey Into Forbidden China, Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books. [Google Scholar]), but also looking more briefly at the historical record, this article makes three important points. First, descriptions of food consumption in these works signify within a broader discourse about a (Western) culture of consumption and consumerism. Second, these accounts are “orientalist”: the writings of Western adventurers register, in Edward Said's terms, a “flexible positional superiority” to the foodways of high Asia. Third, these accounts are organized within a discourse of deprivation as they constantly draw attention to the lack of food available in high Asia and, in particular, to the body's inability to ingest food at high altitudes. Krakauer's and Brackenbury's books exemplify a common topos of Himalayan adventure literature: they use scenes of deprivation to pose a challenge to Western discourses and practices of over-consumption. But the strategic moves enabling this critique are “orientalist” insofar as they continue to manifest a functional difference between the Western adventurer's experience of deprivation and the subsistence economies and foodways of the Himalayan regions

Adventure · Art · Art history · China · Consumption (sociology) · Foodways · Literature · Orientalism · Social science · Sociology · Taste · Anthropology · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · History · Philippine History and Culture · Psychology

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