High altitude buffalo buffet – flying with vultures

When we travel, Nathan and I often look for an opportunity to try something different.  And if there is a chance that we can learn or give back, that also hits high on our list.  Parahawking registered on all three.

On our first trip together 8 years ago we went to France.  After we hiked to the top of Puy de Dome, we saw paragliders launching off the side of the mountain and they were also selling the opportunity for tourists to join them.  At the time we were mildly broke, so shelling out dollars for that was out of scope, but certainly we have regretted it ever since.

I knew when I got to Pokhara, there were lots of adventure sports on offer, but paragliding really caught my eye so I quickly took to convincing Nathan that we should totally do it. As luck would have it when I met a fellow Canadian four or five weeks ago, she told me about her experience working with a group that did Paragliding but with birds to help find the best thermals for the gliding to be even better.  And not only do they offer just paragliding, but they also contribute to conservation efforts to combat the extreme and rapid decline in vulture numbers in Nepal.

Bob the Egyptian Vulture

As I wrote about in an earlier post, Asia has seen a massive decline in their vulture population – upwards of 97% in the last 15 years.  This has been attributed to the use of anti-inflammatory drug used mainly on cattle, which causes renal failure in vultures, who feed on the livestock when they die.  Since cattle are revered in the Hindu culture, they are kept alive for as long as possible and when they do die, they are left to decay naturally.  Vultures feed on them and in doing so they ingest the lethal medicine. 

Despite the product being removed from veterinary use, it is still available for human use, which means theoretically people still have access to treat their cows with it. And simply put, awareness of the fatal effects of this drug on the vultures is pretty low so it can be assumed that people in many areas are carrying on using the drug to treat the cows.

A bit of a domino effect has happened as well which is well documented in India.  They have calculated the costs to human productivity, by noting that the feral dog population has skyrocketed since there is so much carrion available to eat, and the drug has no effect on them.  In turn, human infections of rabies has gone up, and that has taken its toll on the health system as well as peoples overall wellbeing.

The glide itself is hard to describe, but the fun part was certainly taking off (wait for a gust of wind, three big steps, then run off a cliff) and feeding Bob, our thermal guide.  After the take off, the thermal scoops you up so high and so gently, it takes a moment to realize how far from the ground you really are.  With a clear blue sky, the whole Annapurna Mountain range can be seen, as well as the vast terraced hills surrounding Pokhara.  We had little pouches of buffalo meat and a leather bird glove for him to perch and feed on.  We’d track his flight by communicating with someone on the ground, and when he was gearing up for a bite to eat, the guide would blow the whistle and we’d stick our arm out ‘strong and straight’ for him to land on briefly (unless his claw accidentally got caught, oops!).  

At the end of the glide we sat down with one of the staff who does bird care, training and advocacy.  She told us all about the birds and their issues, as well as about the Vulture Restaurant they support, which works to collect non-contaminated carcasses for vultures to feed on.

It was a great experience, and I think it was certainly one of the highlights for us on our little vacation here in Nepal.

More information on the vulture rescue foundation is here: www.parahawking.com

And if you find yourself in Thailand and are looking for a similar type of experience, check out the Elephant Nature Park, which works on elephant rehabilitation and retirement with dignity, which means no rides for guests, but a fun day of river bathing and fruit feeding.

Written by Ashley & Nathan

How was your day?

When I was in Australia, I was travelling alone for 3 months so I had some time to fill with… things, like, travel things that you do to pass your time and see something new.  At that time early on in my trip that became scuba diving, which is weird because before I was petrified of the ocean. Things touching me, or the unseen things that might touch me was a really big turnoff, but a two day course later I was certified and hooked.

This time around it’s yoga although yoga doesn’t have that external sense of exploration with it, certainly the ‘guided meditations’ have a more internally focused exploration.  I have done yoga before but not regularly and not with a legit yogi who has an interesting aura of space around him. 

Scratch it till it bleeds...

His assistant is a young man from the hills who works wakes up early to study Japanese, then works on the family farm, and afterwards comes down to work at the yoga place as well. The walk takes about 1 hour, and lately at night he says by 5:45pm its pretty dark at the point when he’s not quite home yet.  Our conversation started off with “so how was your day?” which of course turned into, “tell me more about your farm” because I am slightly obsessed.

When he started telling me details about the family farm I went straight into interview mode.  The farm consists of 2 buffalo, 1 cow, 3 goats.  They milk the cows and make curd, butter and milk, and are able to come down the hill every 2 or 3 days to sell the butter and curd.  He says the buffalo can produce up to 3 liters a day which is higher than I have heard any farmer yet.  They also produce a rotation of grains: rice, wheat and corn which they use 50% for food, 25% for feed and 25% they are able to sell. They also produce mixed vegetables but have no tunnels.  On 5 ruponis (31 ruponis to a hectare), they are able to sell excess vegetables as well.  I forgot to ask about alternative streams of income because it seemed really interesting that they were able to sell excess food but perhaps they have a small family.

Something I learned in class (at school, in yoga today my mind settled on what animal will I eat for dinner today?) is that even if a small farmer is considered ‘subsistence’ level for growing, often times they will allot a small part of land for higher value crops such as a special holiday rice, to sell it for more profit and they buy in the staple rice they need.  In that way, even subsistence farmers are usually engaged in the market in some fashion.  Perhaps for this family, they are selling curd and butter (higher value thanks to processing) and buying other household needs.

The young man was learning Japanese so he can go abroad and make a more profitable career.  When I hear that though, it makes me a little sad because I think, if he is smart enough to learn Japanese, as well as speak decent English, is there nothing he could do to have meaningful work here?

Further to that, I asked if they have tunnels specifically, because I know that has been a big income generator for many farmers because the plastic tunnels help stretch out the season.  He said their land is too shady for tunnels, and that really it only helps the season for tomatoes and not the other crops. He also had a few other intelligent comments such as the price being too high and whatnot, and again, I was like, why isn’t this kid doing something entrepreneurial?

Anyhow, these questions get into a huge discussion which end somewhere in the arena of geopolitics, so far too advanced for this little blog, but I do know that lots of young people (1500 per day) leave Nepal to work abroad, and many when they get there earn very little more than they would had they stayed home.  It’s the prestige that draws them, as well as the false stories told by huge companies that essentially profit by charging people to place them in jobs abroad, not unlike the coyotes that bring people up from South America, and not dissimilar to their shady dealings either.

Things are blooming!

A stroll down the water

Well, admittedly my days are a little less exciting than they have been in recent weeks.  This week I have spent quite a bit of time working with an excel spreadsheet, and tomorrow and the days that follow will probably find me doing the same until Nathan comes (hurry up already!).

I'll post things when they come up because maybe something exciting will happen, who knows? But if not, I will at least try and post photos now and again.

Thanks so much for reading up until now. It means a lot to have emails and messages from everyone as well as page view numbers indicating that someone other than just my mom was reading along.

The significance of flowers to Nepali culture is wholly fascinating.  Marigolds especially feature prominently many homes and ceremonies.  Such is why its a huge and booming market, with most flowers being imported from India.

Boats for rent, for cheaps, extra cheap if you are willing to bail out water as you go along.

The beaten path down the Fewa Lake front

"Garbage disposal free of charge"

A smiling cup of Namaste cappuccino.

Willy Wonka Goes for a hike, continued

Heading down was as torturous as down hills are. When doing so, you are using your crappy hamstrings instead of your awesome quads and glutes.  Your balance is off and your footing always feels a little unsteady, like a skid on your bum is imminent at any step.  And the stones and rocks and silty dirt suddenly become the rug that gravity wants to yank out from under you.  It’s a tough go, and you’re still hot and a bit tired from going all that way up there.

It’s the only way down though, so you do it and as you move along you realize your heart isn’t pounding as much and the sweat is drying from your forehead a little bit and maybe it isn’t so bad to have to go all the way down again. Who knows, maybe a cab will be waiting at the bottom that you can take back to town?

At this point in the season the rice is nearly all harvested in this area, so the farmers are working hard on making their paddy stacks (the hut shaped rice chaff piles) which is actually really interesting to observe.  They stick a tall post into the ground and spread the first chaff all over the ground in quite a thick pile.  Then they take two ox or three scrawny horses side by side and walk them merry-go-round style around the pole, letting their legs wind the chaff tighter and tighter creating a solid,  circular base to stack everything else on in a nice, tight pile.  Then after piling the bundles of chaff up and up and up, they complete it with an angled roof to deflect some of the rain over the season.  I hadn’t considered how the stacks were made so hiking when this was happening was neat.

On the way up, everyone was working but on the way down people began to break for lunch.  Most people called out a Namaste to me and I would reply but not stop walking.  Then a boy of about 15 came chasing up the paddy to say hi to me, he seemed genuinely happy to greet me so when he invited me down to where lunch was happening I thought, sure why not go convene with the locals? Besides, maybe I could ask a few questions about what they were doing.

His family was about 6 or 7 women, one quiet old man and himself, a 7 year old brother and about a 4 year old boy.  I was engaging him and his brother asking how much English they spoke, which they both did because they go to an English school so I was thinking it was pretty neat to stop and chat with the locals in my own language and everything.

The ladies kept calling things out to him so finally he stopped and asked, “So do you have any chocolates for the baby?” which instantly deflated my interest in being there in that moment.  “No, I don’t have any chocolates, do you have some for me?” I replied, with a friendly smile but also an interest in seeing his reaction.  He looked a little confused, because why would he have chocolates for me when Willy Wonka Foreigner was walking through his turf?  He also quickly asked if I wanted to take pictures of his family, which I sensed would come at a financial cost, so I politely declined and headed back to the path.

I was really disappointed that happened and all the rest of the way down and back to the guesthouse I was quite bothered by the whole encounter.  I thought I read the situation right. I thought maybe it was a novelty for the family to talk to the strangers that visit their country, but I was wrong.  It seems like a simple encounter and that someone asking for chocolates is no big deal, but here is basically says, you’re not from here, you have things, give me those things.  Would you ever ask a random stranger for chocolate? Not likely.

I felt a bit reticent to write this post so bluntly because there’s something about being negative that makes me pause and think about my assumptions and as well, about how fair it is to discuss them in a forum to which the parties I am talking about are not invited.  I recognize that I could have read the situation entirely wrong, but then a conversation this afternoon with the owner of Sacred Valley Inn where I am staying (a UK born Canadian cum Nepali resident) made me feel less crazy and cynical about the experience.  She even said that in her 20 or so years here she has developed a certain ear for a genuine Namaste or the “I want something from you” Namaste.  Mostly though, she says she ignores calls from strangers because even after this long here, people in her own neighbourhood pester her about giving them things like treats or chocolates because she appears to be a foreigner despite marrying a Nepali man so long ago.

She personally feels that the people living in the areas where tourists frequent (Sarankot in this instance) have been a bit spoiled by handouts, or have developed a culture of begging where there never was one before.  We, westerners, go to developing countries with trinkets to hand out because we see that people don’t have as many material goods as we do and we figure, hey, it’s just a pen or a balloon or a soccer ball, people need this stuff.  But they don’t, not really. 

In my opinion, it creates the impression that Santa Claus has come to town, that we have so much wealth that we can instantly give it out like a no-strings-attached ATM machine.  Meanwhile, myself, and many other travellers, devote quite a bit of the household budget to go places and experience new cultures.  We are not endlessly wealthy, we are relatively wealthy, but the ratio for my cost of living to the cost of living here still leaves me as part of the working class strata (when I have a job that is, right now I’m just a bum student—even worse!).

This idea of handouts is quickly becoming one of my pet peeves about travelling because I saw it happen in Senegal where I lived for 2 months, in Guatemala where I was part of a mission’s team for 2 weeks, and in in many other places where begging or stealing or swindling has become part of the imbedded local culture. 

Where does it stop, you might be wondering?  It stops with people from developed countries or privileged positions not handing crap out to local people, I think it’s as simple as that. If that were to happen, it would take time to undo the culture of begging because it took long enough to develop it.  

Tomato tunnel money makers.

I’ll also add in a thought that Nathan and I both agree on, which is begging, like proper asking for money begging, also causes harm because it’s an unsustainable and shallow income stream.  Unsustainable because the beggar doesn’t know where the next dollar or rupee is coming from if it’s coming at all, and shallow because the skills people are being paid for aren’t transferable. If you think of ‘beggar’ as a work position, what are they qualified to do outside of begging?  What are you really paying them for?  Especially in the instance of children where the window for long-term reintegration into ‘normal’ society is so wide open, why encourage them to stay on the street so their family, or Maribou or brothel owner can make money off of them?  Right now in Kathmandu many street kids, mostly boys, are self-funding an addiction to huffing glue thanks to the generous handouts they receive.

At any rate, I welcome your comments, thoughts, or experiences on this topic, because I find other people's take to be really interesting. 

Willy Wonka goes for a hike

Today I set out to hike to Sarankot, a town at the top of a big hill and the launching point for all the paragliders in Pokhara.  I had been there once before but we took the long route through town in a taxi at 4:30am or so to see the sunrise.  Today was going to be different. It was the first day of the next two weeks of my life…

Since the in-field data collection is done, I need to keep busy for the next two weeks until Nathan comes, and as well, take advantage of getting exercise comfortably out of doors while I can.  So my hair-brained idea is to go hiking in the morning, then come back and do work on my thesis all afternoon (and hang out with real live people if anyone wants to be my friend, but that’s a post yet to be written).

These are pictures I took out the bus window.

Today I left a little later than planned because of breakfast and last minute shopping with a lady I had met who headed to Kathmandu later this morning.  9:30am seemed like a reasonable time to set out regardless, because the hike to Sarankot is said to be about an hour.  To get to the entrance point is about 30 minutes but it’s a flat walk so that doesn’t count, right?

I bought a fresh bottle of water, reloaded my SIM card in my cell phone, left the valuables including my camera behind and headed on down the road.  Pokhara is really interesting because it is mostly built up, until it isn’t.  The main area where all the touristy stuff is is called Lakeside and it slowly peters out until you find yourself slogging down a pretty stony, dirt road that leads fairly suddenly to a more rural part of the area.  There are also less cars and more space for the animals to graze, the rice paddy appears and you feel far removed from Pokhara, the tourist town everyone knows and loves.

To get to Sarankot, I found a sign heading to the paragliding landing spot pointing up saying Sarakot 6km so up I went, around the first bend then the second, it was just me and the butterflies enjoying the cool morning breeze.  Then I came across a father and daughter ‘grass cutting’ for the gai and the bakhra (the man was pleased with my Nepali).  He asked if I was alone and heading to Sarankot and I said yes I was. Sometimes Nepali people ask fairly blunt questions that seem a bit weird like ‘oh are you alone?’ or ‘where are you staying?’ or from a friend’s family member, ‘where are you keeping your bank cards?’ But if its someone you know or get a good vibe from, it’s probably just genuine concern for you.  So I asked how far to the top and if he thought it was ok I was alone, he said about an hour and that it was fine.  Then I said my parting Namaste and carried on. 

Being that I have been off the ‘exercise wagon’ a little lately, I was reminded of the sheer joy of completely ruining yourself doing something physical.  The hill to Sarankot is steep, and though it was a road I was following, the road was totally crap to walk on because the terrain went from soft dirt to big stones to cobblestone to grass to puddles to buffalo pattys… it kept changing so I really had to watch my feet the whole time.  But that’s part of the fun I suppose, and I continued. 

The next person I met while washing my face in a cold and fresh water-spout from a stream was a lady who explained in great detail using hand gestures how exactly to get to Sarankot. Unfortunately my fluent Nepalese hasn’t kicked in yet so I sort of did my own questions “Up, then up and up?” and gestures, thanked her and carried on again. 

Since I hardly met anyone after that, the walking was really quite meditative because the dry heat and the grasshoppers brought me back to when I was ten years old walking along the Credit River on a hot August day.  That mixed with the smell of fresh cut wood wafting down from a building project that reminded me of my Dad made me feel quite at peace thinking about him and whether or not he would have liked traveling to Nepal.

I continued up and about 40 minutes into the hike I came across a sign that said “Sarankot à 1 Hour” which was a little off putting.  At that point, just over 1/3 of the way I was pretty much dying because that idyllic heat in my memory didn’t scorch as much as the hot breeze that picked up, spurred on by the blazing sun.  The steep climb to the next switch back felt less of a challenge and more like torture because my legs weren’t accustomed to the 45 degree angle of the hills.  It was really a testament to my willpower that I continued on, up, around and back on the flat. Up, around and back… it went on endlessly until I think I was about three quarters of the way and confronted by some pretty indignant water buffalo that I thought, maybe this is a bit too much for me today.

I sat and ate an orange and waged my options… shoo the buffalo away and carry on or think about the probably 1.5 hour hike then walk back to the guesthouse?

With all the sugar of that fresh clementine coursing through my blood I came to my senses and decided that the “pup out and head downhill to the hideout” route was probably the best option for me.

You must be wondering where Willy Wonka is in all of this?

Tune in tomorrow to find out.

Wiiiiiizzzzzzzz!