Footprints on the Mountainside

Honestly, sometimes I feel like shutting down Wide Aware completely and I would, if that would stop people from “loving” the outdoors so much. But it will not, so the best I can do is to do my bit for the outdoors.

What is this bizarre mood I’m in? Its no bizarre mood. It is looking at some photo albums on the net. Lovely pictures of hill forts in the Sahyadri, with litter in the foreground.

What struck me, is that it is really no shock to find garbage almost anywhere you head out into the outdoors in India. Its like free decoration of the mountainside. Why is it so? Because there are so many people who love the outdoors, that they just have to go there. Apparently, once they have seen the place, its done. The place can go to hell for all they care after that.

You think I’m being anal? Think again. Been to Kondana caves? Why go that far? Been to the National Park? Even with people employed to keep the place clean, the garbage is not under control. The poor playground near the train station is literally swept with brooms every day and all it manages to achieve is soil erosion I guess. The flood of nature lovers doesn’t end.

Do everyone a favour folks. Stay the hell away from the outdoors, if picking up after yourself is beyond your capabilities. Pick up every bit of garbage you throw whether it is biodegradable or not. Smokers, don’t forget the stubs. and gutkha eaters, the wrappers are not for permanent route marking for hikers to come.

And yes, I’m angry. So would you be, if every spare moment in the outdoors was about cleaning up the place. And if you don’t, please do. Pick what litter you find. Speak with groups you come across and ask them to do the same.

Please, while you’re at it, pick up the degradable stuff as well. LEAVE NO TRACE. If possible minimize traces people have left too.

Bio-degradable stuff has an impact on the environment too. Plus, it is going to be litter until it decays, and the place will never be clean, because there will be other people throwing bio-degradable stuff constantly. To put it bluntly, shit is biodegradable. Do you like sitting next to it?

Think of a beautiful location in the outdoors. You’re the only person there. Its untouched. You like? Untouched is only going to be possible when we clean up the place and give it some time to recover. Not if we keep allowing “touches” to remain behind - degradable or not.

I almost forgot: Leave no trace! READ IT, PROMOTE IT, PRACTICE IT.

TagsEnvironment,initiatives,mountain,outdoors,people,ponderingsare applied to this post

One of my freelancers was just enjoying a cup of tea with me during some spare time on a programme. He wanted some advice, and I had all the time in the world, unless something went wrong, so we plunged into the subject.

He had been offered a job with another company and was wondering if he should be taking it. He does some freelance work with Hills and Trails, Wild country Learning, us, OET, and some other companies as well, and earns, (like most other free lance outbound resource people in India) in a very erratic manner. A good month is riches and luxury and some months are a step away from being very badly broke. Not that it isn’t the same with any self employed person, but I find this particularly of concern in the outdoor adventure industry in India.

The salary offered in this case was pitiful, but it would be guaranteed every month. On the other hand, this boy would lose his freedom to choose jobs that he liked, paid well or even helped him learn and develop. It was a tough decision.

Most Indians are not too aware of adventure tourism, and even those aware of it are not always happy to pay big money. Most adventure businesses do reasonably well, but the pool of freelancers we mint our fortunes on, are not as lucky. Some of us are now taking care to offer better rates, more reliable working relationships, some security, etc.

But on the whole, an adventure instructor in India, is leading a life with its economy also in a desperate rescue scenario.

Most such people are more into the business as it doesn’t require any specific qualifications or skills beyond those they can earn on the job. So they aren’t always equipped to have any other profession. They are in a physically demanding profession, and even barring accidents, very few can work in the field as they grow older. They need to be able to figure out other ways of sustaining and providing for their futures, which is something that doesn’t really seem to occur to them.

Not having the benefits of a regular income, or investments through the work place, there is also no source of back up for money. Hardly any invest in any sizeable life insurance, medical insurance or even basic “nest-eggs” for emergencies.

I suggested the best I could. I asked him to tell his new employer that the amount offered was really low, and he couldn’t accept it, unless he was allowed to accept bookings from other companies on the days when the company employing him did not require him. In my opinion, he should have asked for a basic amount per month, with an additional smaller amount calculated according to the number of days he spent in the field. This is what I offer my regulars. Unfortunately, his new employer wouldn’t have allowed that, and I don’t have vacancies.

I hope things work out for him.

Tagsadventure-professionals,general-stuff,India,mountain,outdoors,tourism,travelare applied to this post

This is a particularly sweet memory from my life as a nomadic horsewoman in the mountains.

I lived in Manali, where it snows in the winter. Horsemen here rarely stable their horses, preferring to let them loose in the high altitude pastures in the summer, and tying them together at nights in the winter. The horses themselves are hardy, and I haven’t seen them ever come to any harm like this.

When it snows in Manali, all the Khampa and Kinnauri and often even local horsemen bring their horses down from the alpine meadows and migrate to the Mandi district, where it doesn’t snow, so that the horses can graze by day, and their costs of feeding are lower. They return to the higher areas in spring.
Horsemen come together in small groups for the journey, so that you often have a huge herd of about 50 horses migrating together. Manali to Mandi town is about a 4 day trek, and reaching the interior locations with adequate resources for horses takes another few days. Overall, the journey is about 6-7 days.

We used to travel by the highway and roads, so a huge herd of horses was out of the question in the day. The nights are a different story. The treacherous mountain road is deserted of vehicles by night, so this is when the caravans travel. It was a tough time, as we used to walk all night, and had camp work (cooking and other stuff) and grazing the horses to see to by day. Hardly any time to rest.

But this was also a magical time. Just horse lovers and their precious horses in an age old journey. We used to time the journeys to coincide with full moon nights and a favourite song from my city days took on a whole new relevance. Bear with me, as I share it with you.

Thandi hawa yeh chandani suhani
Ae mere dil sunaa koi kahani
Lambisi ek dagar hai jindagani
Ae mere dil sunaa koi kahani

Mere dil, tu sunaa koi aisi dastaan
Jisko sunkar mile chain mujhe meri jaan
Manjil hai anjaani…….

This cool breeze, this moonlight is pleasing
Oh my heart tell me an (enchanting) story
Life is a long way
Oh my heart tell me an (enchanting) tale

Oh my heart, you tell me, such a tale
Listening to which I come to peace my love
And the destination is unknown…..
And it was like that….. the heart was full of pleasant emotions, as the horses and owners walked in the moonlit nights at peace with themselves…. in harmony….. toward a destination that was an integral part of life for a horse and owner in this part of the mountains.

Saare haseen najare
Sapnon mein kho gaye
Sar rakh ke aasmaan pe
Parvat bhi so gaye

All the beautiful sights around
Are lost in their world of dreams
With their heads cushioned in the sky
Even the mountains are sleeping

And it was like that……….. the world was a beautiful play of moonlight and shadows - a world in black and white - the snow covered mountain tops a very grey against the night. The world indeed seemed to be sleeping, as we walked along the deserted highway through deodar forests silhouetted against the moonlit night. The only sound was the hoofs of horses on the road, and the steady river flowing along.

Aise mein chal raha hun
Pedo ki chaao mein
Jaise koi sitaraa
Badal ke gaon mein

And thus I am walking
In the shadows of the trees
Like some star
In a village of clouds

hmmmm….. drifting along the road…. all night the men, the horses and the night and the journey through the evergreen forests

Thodi si raat beeti
Thodi si reh gayi
Khamosh rutu na jaane
Kya baat keh gayi

Some of the night has passed
Some of it remains
The silent season I know not
What it has said

And the nights….. yeah they passed bit by bit, withthe last kilometer never seeming to end. Its surprising how after walking for 30 km, the last half kilometer seems impossible. It happened everynight, as weary caravans came to open grounds to set camp for the day. Until the night……..

It is a time of my life that was so beautiful, that for all my life, a part of me will remain the simple horsewoman with her simple life and simple cares - away from the complex urban life - far away in the mountains.

Tagsadventure,animals,experience,high-altitude,Himalaya,horses,memories,mountain,travelare applied to this post

Not much is happening work wise, but life looks good!

Planning a set of camps for children in the summer holidays, and this always sets me all fired up with enthusiasm. The variety is quite large this time too. Wide Aware has the usual adventure camps with mountaineering and basic orienteering, as well as some camps about life in the wilderness. On a more dramatic side, there are some wildlife tours timed specially for students in their summer vacations.

Then there is my favourite part. Himalayan tours for Spiti. This year, I’ve finally done away with the usual predesigned tours completely (I know I’d been promising that for a long time) and designed some tours specially based on my years of living in the mountains. What I’m trying to do, is show people a side of life in the Himalaya, that standard tours cannot.

Enthusiasm is flowing, and dreams are a plenty. I’ve completed itineraries for two tours in Spiti. One focuses on the culture, while the other is about wildlife at high altitudes - both subjects close to my heart.

The strange thing is that now I’ve got my pen on paper (or fingers to the keyboard) I don’t want to stop. So for all those who have been writing to me for more tour ideas and more tours along the lines of experiences I share, this seems promising. I’ve got a couple of other locations in mind.

If there is something specific you guys would like to see before I head on my own route, feel free to let me know, and I’ll see if I can make it a priority.

As for the rest….

Now is a time to take a nice deep breath and enjoy the fruits of all these months of labour. I’ve made new friends, introduced many more people to the outdoor addiction, and the payments are rolling in.

Life doesn’t get any better!

Tagsadventure,children,experience,mountain,news,outdoors,people,writingare applied to this post

Nairobi, Kenya – A new report released today by WWF finds a clear and escalating pattern of climate change impacts on bird species around the world, suggesting a trend towards a major bird extinction from global warming.

The report, Bird Species and Climate Change, reviews more than 200 scientific articles on birds in every continent to build up a global picture of climate change impacts.

“Robust scientific evidence shows that climate change is now affecting birds’ behaviour,” said Dr Karl Mallon, Scientific Director at Climate Risk Pty Ltd and one of the authors of the report. “We are seeing migratory birds failing to migrate, and climate change pushing increasing numbers of birds out of synchrony with key elements of their ecosystems.”

The report, prepared by international climate change specialists, identifies groups of birds at high risk from climate change: migratory, mountain, island, wetland, Arctic, Antarctic and seabirds. While bird species that can move and adapt easily to different habitat are expected to continue to do well, bird species that thrive only in a narrow environmental range are expected to decline, and to be outnumbered by invasive species.

The report also shows that birds suffer from climate change effects in every part of the globe. Scientists have found declines of up to 90 per cent in some bird populations, as well as total and unprecedented reproductive failure in others.

Scientists also analyzed available projections of future impacts, including bird species extinction. They found that bird extinction rates could be as high as 38 per cent in Europe, and 72 per cent in northeastern Australia, if global warming exceeds 2ºC above pre-industrial levels (currently it is 0.8ºC above).

“Birds have long been used as indicators of environmental change, and with this report we see they are the quintessential ‘canaries in the coal mine’ when it comes to climate change,” said Hans Verolme, Director of WWF’s Global Climate Change Programme.

“This report finds certain bird groups, such as seabirds and migratory birds, to be early, very sensitive, responders to current levels of climate change. Large-scale bird extinctions may occur sooner than we thought.”

If high rates of extinction are to be avoided, rapid and significant greenhouse gas emission cuts must be made, WWF says.

The global conservation organization also believes that the current approach to bird conservation, focused on protecting specific areas with a high bird diversity, will fail because climate change will force birds to shift into unprotected zones. A major change in approach to bird conservation is required, according to WWF.

END NOTES:

Examples of how climate change is affecting some bird species around the world:

Africa: The tawny eagle is an arid savanna raptor found in Asia and Africa. Small changes in precipitation predicted with climate change would likely result in the bird’s extinction in its African habitat in the southern Kalahari. If the mean annual precipitation stays the same but the inter-annual (year to year) variation increases by less than 10 per cent, the bird’s population will decrease considerably.

UK: The particular vulnerability of seabirds to climate change is illustrated by the unprecedented breeding crash of UK North Sea seabirds in 2004. The direct cause for the breeding failure of common guillemots, Arctic skuas, great skuas, kittiwakes, Arctic terns and other seabirds at Shetland and Orkney colonies was a shortage of small fish called sandeels, a crucial prey species for the seabirds. As a result, the nearly 7,000 pairs of great skuas in the Shetlands, for example, produced only a handful of chicks and starving adult birds ate their own young. Warming ocean waters and major shifts in species that underpin the ocean food web are thought to be behind the major sandeel decline.

USA: An unprecedented 2002 drought in southern California caused a 97 per cent breeding decline in four species: the rufous crowned sparrow, wrentit, spotted towhee and California towhee. Breeding success dropped from 2.37 fledglings per pair in 2001 (a normal year) to 0.07 fledglings per pair during 2002, the driest year in the region’s 150-year climate record. Precipitation in this region is expected to decrease and become more variable with global warming. Even slight increases in arid conditions would make these species vulnerable to extinction in a dry year.

Europe/Africa: Pied flycatcher birds and other species are shifting the timing of seasonal behaviors in response to climate change. Shifts like these can cause problems for birds if the plants and animals they interact with do not shift at the same rate. In Europe, earlier spring peaks in insect numbers mean that some pied flycatchers (long-distance migratory birds) no longer arrive from Africa in time to match food peaks with peak demands of their nestlings. This climate-change induced mismatch is strongly linked to 90 per cent declines in some European pied flycatcher populations over the past two decades.

Australia: Illustrating the vulnerability of mountain birds to climate change, the habitat of the golden bowerbird is predicted to shrink by 97.5 per cent with a future warming of 3°C and a 10 per cent decline in rainfall. The bird occupies cool habitat in Australia’s wet tropics on conical mountains surrounded by warmer lowlands. As temperatures rise, its suitable habitat will contract, and beyond 3˚C of warming is expected to completely disappear.

For more information, please contact:
Anshuman Atroley
Communications Manager
WWF-India
Tel:+91-11-4150 4797
E-mail:aatroley@wwfindia.net

© [14 Nov 2006] WWF. Some rights reserved. WWF-India

Tagsanimals,Environment,mountain,news,worriesare applied to this post