Gallavanting in Ghandruk

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After arriving in Kathmandu on a Friday and spending that night and Saturday night in the city, I travelled to Pokhara for 7 hours by bus with the other Global Gap volunteers that would be partaking in the conservation project in Ghandruk.  We stayed in Lakeside (a part of Pokhara which is situated at the side of a lake… Imagine that) for one night and then journeyed to Ghandruk which is a village located in the Annapurna Conservation Area (ACA).  It cannot be reached by car.  The closest road ends at about an hour trek away.  We rode in a jeep for 2.5 hours from Pokhara to the jeep station that marks the end of the road and then walked up to Ghandruk.  An hour later, I arrived exhausted at Namaste Guesthouse, the place in which I would be staying.

Now that all of that boringness is out of the way, I can talk about the conservation project here in Ghandruk. =)  Okay.  First thing’s first.  It’s awesome.  From the camera traps, to the butterfly and bird surveys, to the community outreaches, there is always something to be done here.  But all of our activities do require quite a bit of stair climbing.  Ghandruk is situated in the Himalayas, and thus is very hilly and steep, so if you want to go anywhere, you will be climbing or going down stairs.  Stairs, stairs, stairs.  And they’re not really stairs.  They are more like flat rocks conveniently placed to meet the needs of your foot.  I am the slowest of all of the volunteers.  My legs are shaky and my feet are covered in blisters and every hike up is a struggle, but I always make it.  It has been 5 days in a row now without a rest day.  Each day we ascend hundreds of meters and then descend or in the reverse order.  My body needs a break.  That’s what today is for!  Yay!  The hikes may be hard, but the payoff is wonderful.  I am constantly rewarded with dazzling views and cool naturalist activities to do. 

 

 

The view from my guesthouse each morning

 



 

My guesthouse, Namaste.

The first day of work I had entailed a hike to and up Komrong Mountain in order to extract the data from the six camera traps that are placed there.  Each camera trap is checked one week after being placed and then checked again and removed the next week.   They record in 15 second chunks whenever they detect a change in temperature or drastic movement.  They also take pictures.  So, we trekked up and up and up and finally stopped at a clearing for lunch.  Then we went up some more and with the aid of our trusty GPS, we made our way to each trap, extracted the data, and filled out the data sheet that contained things like GPS coordinates, leaf litter depth, tree circumference, ground cover, canopy cover, and grazing intensity.  The camera traps captured some barking deer, a leopard cat (the leopard markings you imagine but on a cat that is a bit larger than a house cat), and some other small mammals.  The most significant find was the leopard cat, as one hadn’t been spotted for quite some time.  And so, after checking all 6 cameras, we trekked back from the mountain to our guesthouses.

All of the conservation volunteers are housed in 2 guesthouses about 30 minutes away from each other (almost all stairs).  I am located with 7 other volunteers and one of our supervisors in the lower guesthouse called Namaste Hotel.  The other supervisor and the rest of the volunteers are at the upper guesthouse called Panorama Guesthouse or Raj Mahal (the owner—our conservation manager—owns the place and is called Raj; I appreciate the humor in this name very much).  Being placed in the lower guesthouse has its ups and downs, but overall it is absolutely amazing staying here.  The view is slightly more spectacular at Panorama, but it is still stunning down here.  And on the days we have to go up, there is more walking for us, but on the days we go down, there is more walking for the Panorama people.  The owners of the guesthouse are considered our host family (a husband and a wife).  We call them Didi (older sister) and Dai (older brother).  They are a hilarious couple probably in their 60s that is always laughing and speaking to us in Nepali as if we understand.  Didi gets hysterical quite often and is extremely entertaining.  Sometimes the Dai and Didi whom we know and love go off and travel, and we get a new Didi to give us meals and things we need like toilet paper and blankets.  But that’s okay because basically all of the Nepali people I have met have been so open and welcoming and perfect.  Whoever we have with us makes us delicious food and is always very kind.  For this, I am very thankful.

 

2 cute girls on a path at the end of one of our bird surveys.  One of the volunteers was rolling a cigarette and they were fascinated by it.

Prayer Wheels that you walk by and spin with your right hand for good luck.  Each prayer wheel (also called a prayer bell) has prayers carved into it written in Nepali.

 



Here is a little about the food we have.  My two favorite dishes are Dal Bhat and Momos.  Dal Bhat is an unlimited dish, so when you order it in most restaurants, the servers will perpetually come by with more fixings more you to add to your plate.  It’s crazy.  So you have plain white rice which you submerge in Dal (a soupy thing that is delicious) and then you have a variety of different veggie combos (some spicy, all delicious).  And you have the choice of mixing it all together or not, or eating it with cutlery or with your right hand (everything here is right hand; you even have to keep your right side closest to the Hindu monuments along the path as you walk).  Dal Bhat is very popular here and my face and the faces of my fellow volunteers always light up on Dal Bhat night!  The other hunk of deliciousness I so enjoy is the momo.  This is essentially a dumpling filled with vegetables or chicken or chicken with vegetables etc etc, but never cow (cows are holy here; they are the earthly representation of the Hindu god Kah). They are normally boiled, but when they are fried, lordy-loo, we are in hea-ven (southern belle accent).  Boy are those good.  Oh!!!  And I can’t go without mentioning (I don’t know the spelling) badis, which are these fried onion and vegetable delectable crunchy chunks of love.  Hopefully on the next post I’ll have pictures of all of these dishes.  I see them and I gobble them up before I give myself a chance to take pictures for you all. Oops

 

Okay. Back to the project. My first day, like I said, we did a habitat survey and collected data at the camera traps.  After being here for three weeks, I have only conducted 1 habitat survey and have collected the images and video from the cameras twice.  Our more common activities are bird surveys, butterfly surveys, and the community outreaches.  We have also conducted one primate survey, but we didn’t see any primates after 7 hours of trekking—that’s nature for ya!   Bird Surveys…  We have a data sheet at the ready, mark down our beginning coordinates and time, and walk along a path searching for birds in the shrubs, trees, and whatever else.  When we see a bird, we do our best to identify its species before it flies away.  We also try and get pictures for future reference, but my camera is garbage so I mainly just look through the binoculars to identify.  We always bring along our Birds of Nepal book and refer to that as we go along.  The calls we hear also help us identify the species.  Once we have identified a bird, we mark the species name down, the quantity we saw and what they were doing.  Next, when we have 10 unique species marked down on the sheet, we write down our ending coordinates, time, and begin a new data sheet.  I can now identify a ton of birds by sight and sound now.  My favorite bird is the Verditer Flycatcher, which varies from a brilliant turquoise blue to a pale baby blue.  It has a medium sized body and average sized beak.  It is absolutely beautiful and quite the frequent visitor.  Now for my favorite activity—the Butterfly Surveys.  We use the fixed points method to conduct these, meaning we pick a spot and orient ourselves around it, looking for butterflies in the surrounding area.  Boy do those things flutter quickly!  It was hard at first to get a good enough look at the little guys to be able to consult the book in order to identify the butterfly’s species.  But now, I don’t even really need the book!  I have become so familiar with many of the more common species that I can identify them almost instantaneously.  Their flight patterns are fascinating as are their breeding patterns, their spreading of pollen, feeding patterns, and, well, everything.  I have been looking at the data from the psat few months and hope to conduct an observational study of some sort on butterflies in the greater Ghandruk area in my last week here in the conservation project.  For the collection of the butterfly data (which is similar to the bird survey data), we mark down the species, the quantity we saw, what they were doing, and any extra notes.  I thoroughly enjoy chasing butterflies through fields trying to figure out what they are.  It’s great fun and I hope to continue studying lepidoptera back at home.  I will be investing in a California butterfly guidebook!  Finally we have the community outreaches, which (for as long as I have been here) have been litter pick-up around the village.  There’s not much to say about this, but people sure like to cram garbage into crevices in walls.  And, it’s nice when we walk past the locals and they say thanks or hand us some trash to put into our bags as opposed to throwing it on the ground. 

 

 

Indian Tortoiseshell butterfly.  One of the more common ones.

 

 



 

Peablue butterfly.  It is about the size of a quarter and darts around so quickly, rarely landing.  You can identify it by the small dots on each of the wings at the bottom.

 

 

The Cabbage White butterflies are by far the most common butterfly in the area we completed surveys in.  The Cabbage Whites come in two forms, the Large Cabbage White and the Indian Cabbage White.  You do not distinguish them by size though.  Sometimes the Indian Cabbage Whites are just as large as the Large Cabbage Whites so you tell the difference by the presence of dots on the bottom of the butterfly's wings.  With dots, like in this picture, is the Indian Cabbage Whites and without is the Large Cabbage White.

 

 

 

 

It's hard to see, but it's the nest of most likely a Verditer Flycatcher (my favorite bird). 

The weather…….  Don’t get me started.  It is usually clear in the morning, which makes our breakfast that much more pleasant with the dazzling view, but Mother Nature has gotten into a nasty routine recently.  Each day around 2pm it will start to drizzle, and then rain, and then pour, and then finally storm.  As I type this, I am holed up in my room under a massively thick duvet, avoiding the wetness of the outside world.  My hands are so cold, that it almost hurts to type this.  But my gloves are like 2 meters away and I can’t be bothered to get out of bed to fetch them.  This is my life now (LOL).  The sun is strong here as we are a couple thousand meters up, but I have yet to get burned.  Some have not been so lucky. It is often warm when we are trekking, with the sun blaring down on us, but it’s never too uncomfortable.  I much prefer trekking in the heat than in the slippery slidey rain. 

Oh!  Cow poop!  Yay! 

 

 

 

 

Yeah.  It’s everywhere.  Also mule poop and buffalo poop.  Poop poop turds poop.  Everywhere.

 

Stinging Nettles.  OWWWW  SO MUCH PAIN WHEN YOU TOUCH THESE.  But oddly enough they do not leave a mark.  Bullies.

You may be wondering how things are brought up to Ghandruk when the closest road is an hour’s walk outside of the village.  Well, it’s mules and manpower.  My supervisor has seen a man with a refrigerator on his back.  I have seen people with steel (I don’t really know what it is but it’s something for building) tubing on their shoulders.  I have seen people carrying other people!!!!!  The system is as such: whatever the load the person is carrying is usually placed in a basket, or something that is easily tied up.  Then, a band that goes across the forehead is attached to the basket or whatever.  The person then hoists the load up onto their back, with it dangling from their head thanks to that thick cloth band resting above his or her face.  My roommate’s luggage was carried by a small elderly woman, who had no trouble with the upward of 40 kilos on her back.  It’s insane.  Miracles.  MIRACLES I SAY.

 

I also ought to mention the bugs.  Leeches.  Not near water.  In the Himalayas.  They inch their way up onto your shoes, up your ankles, into your socks, and feast on your blood.  They have an anticoagulant in their spit, so you bleed and bleed once you pull the little turds off.  They are so annoying and we are all so paranoid.  They tend to congregate near water, but by no means are aquatic creatures.  They inch along dry ground looking for some poor innocent creature to dine on.  They are evil.  You cannot crush them.  You have to cut them into two or burn them to end their putrid lives.  Once, I pulled a very full leech off of my friend’s leg and it started puking up blood because it had eaten too much and I had apparently squeezed too hard.  Then my supervisor came and burned the living hell out of it.  It was quite the sight.  There aren’t really mosquitos here, but we do manage to get the occasional bite from the occasional bug, but it’s nothing like Peru was.  Boy were those mosquitos brutal! 

 

The scorched remains of a leech featuring the blood it threw up while my supervisor was burning it.

Two last things before I sign off.  Jinhu Hot Springs and Poon Hill!  Yup for the past two weekends, I have been busy travelling to each of these places.  The hot springs were a mere 3 hours away and were delightful.  The water was so hot.  We also saw some Grey Langur Monkeys down on the river bank by the hot springs.  I don’t have any pictures sadly, but it sure was lovely.  We were surrounded by the jungle with the river rushing by us and the birds singing and the butterflies flying by.  Only fond memories of Jinhu.  The next weekend I trekked for 9 hours to get to Ghorepani, the village at the base of Poon Hill.  On the way there, I again saw Grey Langur Monkeys and also walked through the largest rhododendron forest in the world.  It was breathtaking.  We spent the night in Ghorepani and woke up at an ungodly hour to walk up to Poon Hill to see the sunrise.  After almost 400 meters of straight up, we got to the top while it was still dark.  But, clouds!  Clouds everywhere!  Tons of trekkers joined my group and me in disappointment and solidarity at the lack of the view of the sunrise over the mountains.  It was a flop, but at least the walk there was nice.  The walk back to Ghandruk from Ghorepani was only around 7 hours as it was downhill, and it too was fun as I met some awesome people including a couple from Toronto (Hi John and Ryan!).  These weekend excursions made it so I didn’t get a break from hiking for weeks, but I have today off so I am resting.  Yay rest!  Yay sore legs.

On the way to Poon Hill featuring Buddhist prayer flags which are all over the place here.

 

 

 

Rhododendrons EVERYWHERE

 

 

Rock piles.  I'm not sure if these rock piles have some spiritual significance or are just tourists marking their territory.  Either way I liked them.

RHODODODOOEROOEEDERRONNNNS EVERYWHERE

 From the cloudy Poon Hill with my volunteer friends.

So that about sums up what things have been like here in Ghandruk for the past few weeks.  Oh!  I almost forgot!  We captured a leopard on three of our cameras, which is great news.  One hadn’t been captured since December.  Yeah, so I probably will post in Nepal one last time from Kathmandu late next week.  Sorry for the delay in this post.  I have just been so tired after work each day that I can’t muster up the energy to write.  Also, I’m learning French!  Also I’m no longer the slowest!

Also, UC Berkeley Class of 2019!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Okay bye, pals.