Rao, Lucy and I woke up at 4:00 am and took a taxi up to Konark in order to be at the Sun Temple at sunrise (and because our flight from Bhubaneswar was scheduled for noon). The drive only took 1.5 hours or so and first our driver took us to the beach where all the Indian tourists watch the sunrise. We joined the crowd of hundreds and appeared to be the only Westerners there (Lucy was a popular target for photographers and handshakes). The morning fog obscured the sunrise a bit, but made the dozens of sailboats that were out [View Full Entry]

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After 2 days of flights (DC to London to Munich to Delhi to Bhubaneswar) we made it to the east coast of India to Chilika Lake. I was there for 10 nights and stayed at the guesthouse of the Chilika Lake Reserve along with John (USGS guru), Tracy (UN FAO veterinarian), Scott (FAO Biologist), Lucy (Post-doc in Wales), Subbarao (FAO India), Bala (ornithologist), Selvam (ornithologist), Acty (veterinarian), and a handful of others as well as 8-12 trappers that would be catching all the birds we were there to sample and mark. The trappers were amazing, led by Ali Hussein, who must [View Full Entry]

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Since our flight wasn't until early evening, I was lucky to get to do some sight-seeing in Beijing at Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Kong Ning and Liu Jin were kind enough to show me around and took good care of me all day. The ParaOlympics were just concluding in Beijing, so there were still a ton of tourists around (and the air quality was still good). The Forbidden City was massive and would take several days to explore completely. Every hall and building was beautifully decorated and there were fantastic courtyards with gardens and many museums exhibiting splendors of [View Full Entry]

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Shane flew to Beijing in September as part of his new job with USGS (Patuxent Wildlife Research Center), working on a satellite telemetry project of waterfowl migration in Eurasia and Africa. By placing transmitters on the backs of ducks and geese using little harnesses, we can track the migration of individuals around the globe. A specific focus of the project is determining how wild birds may be contributing to the spread of avian influenza (bird flu), which spread prolifically from Southeast Asia and China into Western Asia, Europe, and Africa since 2005. We would be working at Qinghai L [View Full Entry]

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We spent our last week in Nepal in Chitwan National Park, near the Indian border. We stayed at a nice hotel (with air conditioning! a real luxury, and a great relief in the hot, humid jungle). They arranged daily activities for us, including a cultural tour of the town, jungle walk, jeep safari, elephant-back safari, native dancing, and a bath with an elephant in the river. The jungle walk was interesting because our guide only had a stick as a weapon. In Kruger, guided walks always had two guards with big rifles. In Chitwan, they have rhinos, elephants, tigers, and sloth [View Full Entry]

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The last leg of our trek! We walked to Ghorepani, which was over 5000 feet of uphill. The landscape had changed yet again into dense rhodedendron forests. Bright pink flowers carpeted the floor and hillsides. We had another early wake-up to hike up to the top of Poon Hill, which is a beautiful spot to watch the sun rise. We could see Dhaulaghiri, one of the ten highest mountains in the world, and Annapurna South, among other peaks. We then continued on our way. At one point, Shane got stung by some nettles. Luckily, Dilman knew another plant that would counteract [View Full Entry]

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We passed some sketchy avalanche prone areas where there had clearly been some recent rockslides, but made it to Thorung Phedi for lunch with little problem. The teahouse we stopped at was full of other trekkers, many of which we had met during the past week, all waiting to go over the pass the following day. From there it was less than two hours (although just 450 m in altitude) to the high camp (4900 m) where we would spend the night. The weather wasn’t bad, although clouds were obscuring the views more often than not. After warming up with some [View Full Entry]

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We spent an afternoon exploring Muktinath, which has a big Buddhist and Hindu temple complex, a popular pilgrimage site for both religions. There are several areas with spouts or fountains you can bathe in to wash away all your sins and get into heaven. In this village, along with western style toilets, also had the first motorized vehicles we'd seen since leaving on the trek. The next day we went to Kagbeni, a very old stone village with an ancient monastery overlooking the river valley. The Kali Gandaki is the deepest river gorge in the world, though that's hard to tell [View Full Entry]

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In Manang, we stayed 2 nights at the Yak Hotel Lodge, which featured an interesting Mexican section to the menu. Hmmm. On our “off” day we hiked up a few hundred meters to some amazing overlooks of the valley, a big green lake, and Gangapurna glacier. We got fleeting glimpses of Gangapurna peak (7454 m) as well. There were a lot of prayer flags flapping all over the place and some stone huts used by goat herders in the winter months. We saw some baby oxen and lots of livestock roaming the town as well, which was a small metropolis as [View Full Entry]

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We got picked up at our hotel after meeting up with our guide, Dilman, and our porter, Shiva, and then learned what a joy it was to drive in Kathmandu....got caught up in a massive traffic jam (apparently a daily occurrence in the city). Our capable driver cut through some side streets and then drove through an area clearly designed for pedestrians or carts and finally got us out of the city. The road to the mtns was really windy (some white knuckle moments when our driver would decide to pass a truck on a blind curve, beeping his horn as [View Full Entry]

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