Based on the ideas generated during the April 2021 meet-up, a first session of the Winter School took place in April 2023. Led by the two founders Cristina Bogdan and Mriganka Madhukaillya, the week-long session was built around the question, What is reality?

It took the students on a mind journey of the tendencies towards de-realization of reality in philosophical traditions across the world, culminating with the ontological flattening brought about by Modern Technology. In the exceptional setting of the forest, it was then possible to draw upon encounters with the non-human, understood at the entity as well as the systemic level, to propose corrective measures to this thinking.

Further interactions with local stakeholders, such as farmers, forest rangers, conservationists, our host Manju Barua at the Wildgrass Lodge (the first to imagine tourism in the area), and a guest appearance by Deleuzian philosopher Stephen Zepke, encouraged us to think together about the relationship our global technology can entertain with a cosmic thinking that gives meaning to ecology, as a world view rather than as a remedy to local and often disconnected issues.