Want a long trek in the Himalayas? Curl up with a great read.

Garry Weare

I’ve just finished a wonderful book about the Himalayas. Snow leopard country. It’s called “A long walk in the Himalayas – a trek from the Ganges to Kashmir” by Garry Weare.

Weare’s story of his five-month trek from the sacred source of the Ganges through the Kullu Valley, remote mountains of Zanskar and Ladakh (known as Little Tibet) to his beloved houseboat on a lake in Kashmir is an entertaining read. Throughout many years of travel in the Himalayas he has come to know the region, its peoples and cultures well and he writes about them with compassion, empathy and understanding.

"A long walk in the Himalayas"

Weare has serious Himalaya credentials. He’s a life member of the Himalayan Club, a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, a noted mountain photographer and a founding director of the Australian Himalayan Foundation.

The book is a travel log, a meditation on walking, a memoir of places visted and loved and a tale of adventure. His journey, which is taken with a secret stash of rum and whisky, involved walking 2500 kilometres, most of it above 5000 metres and crossing at least 20 passes, a tough experience and he lost over 15 kilos.

During a trek in September 1995 Garry was lucky to actually see a snow leopard. “I had left camp early to cross the Konze La, a pass in western Ladakh. There had been an unseasonable snowfall and ….I stopped to watch a herd of yaks. At that point I sensed I was not the only one watching the yaks. Glancing around I caught a glimpse of a large cat. I had seen enough snow leopards in zoo enclosures to know what I was looking at. I just had a glimpse and no more but it was sufficient and for a while I did not move, hoping against hope that the elusive cat would reappear. It was not to be.”

Garry recently tod me, “The cat sighting was after a particular early but heavy snowfall in September. However as you appreciate the best opportunity to get a cat sighting is during the winter soon after the first winter snowfall when the bharal (Himalayan blue sheep, a favourite snow leopard prey) head to the valleys and the cats follow.” Lucky him!! Is all I can say.

Currently Garry is working on a Primary Health Care project in Zanskar and Ladakh, Northern India supported by the Australian Himalayan Foundation. The project trains the local Amchis, traditional faith healers in basic western medical advice.  Often these Amchi are the only medical help available to villagers in remote parts of the mountains. Last year the ABC’s ‘Foreign Correspondent’ did a segment on this project (see it here.) Absolutely fascinating.

You can support this and other Australian Himalayan Foundation projects here.

Forest fires threaten snow leopards in Nepal

Annapurna ranges from my last trek in the region in 2004.

Over the years I’ve heard of many different threats to the survival of snow leopards in the wild. In Nepal it now turns out that forest fires are also a threat to the cats. Last week a fire in the Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP) broke out after two hotel porters threw marijuana stubs onto a heavily wooded area.

“Though there have been no human casualties, forests of rhododendron and nigalo (arrow bamboo) worth millions of rupees have been destroyed in the fire. Many endangered species may have also died in the fire.” ACAP´s Ghandruk office chief Sudeep Adhikari said.

ACAP Project Director Lal Prasad Gurung said he has not seen fire on such scale in his 25-year conservation career and that the region is home to snow leopards and tahr (a large wild goat that is a prey species of the snow leopard) as well as numerous other animals. (Full story here.)

I live in Melbourne Victoria and know all too well the danger of bush or wildfire. Sadly we had horrendous fires here in February last year with the loss of 173 lives. Melbourne Zoo officials estimated millions of wild animals like kangaroos, koalas, wombats, possums and birds lost their lives in those fires too.

Sleeping in a cave to save snow leopards and report on Himalayan climate change

Navin Singh Khadka, environmental journalist for the BBC. Photo by The Nepal Monitor.

Navin Singh Khadka is an environmental journalist from Nepal with a keen interest in how climate change is affecting the Himalayas. Currently based in London, he is an Environment Reporter for BBC News.

Navin has had some tough adventures doing his work. In today’s interview with The Nepal Monitor he not only talks about climate change coverage in Nepal’s media but also how he once battled altitude sickness to cover a story about risks faced by Everest porters (see story here) and slept in a mountain cave doing a story on snow leopard poaching.

Navin Singh Khadka at 4000m with Sherpa porters. Photo by BBC.

Asked what inspired him to become an environmental reporter and focus on climate change Navin says – “Environment has been one area I have been consistently and intensively covering since I began journalism more than one and a half decades ago. Wildlife used to be my favorite beat, and I have slept in caves in trans-Himalayan region to investigate, for instance, poaching of Snow leopard. But over the years I have witnessed how climate change is changing our natural environment, and that is how I was drawn into covering this phenomenal global issue. With so much of regional and global politics increasingly surrounding it, as a journalist, there is no looking back, I guess.

“Reporting climate issues for the BBC Nepali service is quite satisfying as I can reach millions of those very rural people who are already bearing the brunt of climate impacts but have no idea about climate change.” Read the full story here.

See Video of Navin talking about climate change in Nepal.