Field Works: Reflections on Ethnographic Research and Digital Practices in Remote Areas

Migration, mobility, and social media arguably form an emerging “field site” for research on mobile populations. This chapter reflects on blending established, traditional ethnographic approaches with digital methods to study migratory groups in remote Himalayan regions of Nepal, particularly during pandemic conditions. It emphasizes the importance of holistic contextualization, integrating various aspects such as gender, family, religion, occupation, and others into the research process of examining tourism encounters - in this case the Everest. As the author contends, ethnography recognizes the inherent difficulty of fully capturing every dimension of a person’s life, striving instead to grasp a broader sense of those dimensions.