Another day another sunrise

Since Tihar is on it’s a little hard to find any farmers who are working and want to talk to us, so instead we were invited for lunch over at Ezina’s grandmother’s house to try out some special Tihar dishes.  I am working hard to get my numbers up for the interviews and am finding I’m reaching ‘saturation’ for some questions, when you repeatedly hear the same answer over and over.  I’ll have to digest what this means as well as come up with finding out more information that appears to be missing.  Finding good questions is really hard work!

The rest of yesterday was a pretty lazy day just walking the streets ad checking out all the dancing and music to be seen and heard. The festivities went on until late into the night, but the girl I met from Peterborough, Tanya and I decided to have a few happy hour cocktails and dinner and then head to bed early so we could catch the sunrise.

After about a 30 minute drive up a very narrow two way road up the Sarangkot mountain lookout, and a little bit of stairs to get further up away from the phone poles and huts and whatnot, we managed to catch glimpses of all the mountain peaks of the Anapurna range.  It wasn’t as clear as when I did the sunrise outside Kathmandu, but we still felt really close to the mountains and got to enjoy them lighting up once the sun showed its glowing face.

My friend Tanya and I headed down to Maya Devi which is a little rustic resort place where all the parasails land and the birds live for the bird and parasailing company.   She herself is a ‘falconer’ so I have really learned a lot about that whole scene. Apparently in Nepal, nearly 90% of the wild vultures have been eradicated because of a drug called dioclofenac that is administered to cows and buffalo for medicine as well as ‘just in case’ preventive medicine.  This drug has a really long half-life so it stays in the flesh of the animal well after it has died, and those carcasses are fed to the vultures.  The problem is, it is highly toxic to the birds and they end up dying rather quickly after eating the flesh.

So this parasailing company is operating as a business that also contributes funds to rehabilitative programs for birds as well as conservation and awareness-raising for the issue.  Many farmers in the immediate area are working towards not using the drug, and India has already banned it.

That’s about it for now. 

Happy Friday and thanks for reading.