Ein Vortrag im Rahmen der Geographie Keynotes. There are two kinds of registers that we found. The first kind was where the guests entered their personal information such as their nationality, profession, Date of Birth, destination etc., etc., and the second, where the guests entered their comments and drew sketches.

Entries in the first register were mandatory while comments in the second register were optional. In total, we managed to collect twelve registers from four inns in Passu dating between 1982 and 2019. Four are entry registers and eight are comments registers. The entry registers show that about twenty thousand foreign travelers stayed at these four inns between this period (1982 to 2019). We categorized these twenty thousand travelers by nationality and profession. There are more than twelve hundred comments inscribed in these registers ranging from two liners to three pages long. The average length of a comment is about one paragraph of an A4 size page. The twelve hundred odd comments inscribed in these registers are in twenty-six different languages. The most common language is English representing about 500 comments followed by Japanese representing about 300 comments. These early travelers took special interest in both reading and inscribing their thoughts in these registers. They passed their opinions about the hospitality or the cunning of local people, gave special and mundane advice to fellow trekkers, scolded the behavior of fellow trekkers. They also wrote extensive and detailed directions and guidelines for fellow trekkers, soulful and romantic monologues, political views, and mundane matters. The tone and tenor of these comments range from satirical, witty, racist, xenophobic, enlightened and alienated. I am currently translating, transcribing and coding these comments and hope to share initial analysis with you during the presentation.