Sham

Last week marked my second and final visit to the field to conduct my surveys.  Sham Valley sits just west of Hemis National Park.  Not only is it beautiful, it is also one of the places in Ladakh where you are most likely to spot a snow leopard.  Well, FAIL.  Still no sightings though I have seen ample sign.

Jigmet, Gyalson, Angmo, and I headed out of Leh in the open-backed gypsy with all of our gear towards Saspochey.  Traveling in the back of the Gypsy has become one of my favorite ways to travel.  Its typically bumpy, dusty, and – at times – a little frightening but, as you are holding on to the seat as best you can, the fresh air while driving windy roads through the mountains offers strange peace and refreshment.  Our first stop on this trip is a small town about 2 hours from Leh called Saspochey.  Here we stay at a school house and prepare for the nature trek we will take 8 children and 6 teachers on the next day.  

We wake up at 5 to begin the slow – very slow – hike, riddled with tea breaks and photo opportunities, to the towns summer pasture located at 4,550 meters.  The hope is to share some identification skills and wildlife knowledge in a hands-on way with this small crew.  We also hope to see abundant wildlife in the valley – again, FAIL.  Though it was an incredibly beautiful trek, over the 9 hours we saw little other than a few bird species, wildflowers, and one ibex.  Jigmet was not entirely pleased but the rest of us had a great time enjoying a nice sunny day in the mountains.  When we finally returned to the village, we find out one of the local woman saw a snow leopard near the village earlier that day.  Naturally.  Good for her, bad for us. 

The next day we began our real work – Angmo and I surveying the households of 5 different villages and Jigmet and Gyalson collecting motion-triggered cameras from 9 locations.  Both proved to be exhausting work.  Angmo and I ended up surveying 26 households with much more success than in Zanskar…and I did not get sick this time – wahoo!  One of my favorite things about this survey work, though it has not turned out the way it was supposed to, is getting to experience genuine, sweet hospitality.  Each household we approached, whether they were in the middle of doing something, hosting other people, or taking a rest; they stopped, invited us in, and fed us tea and food until I about burst.  Out of the 26 households, nobody was bothered that we were there asking questions or bothered that we interrupted their work.  One of the things I know I will bring back with me to my little house in Durham is this sweet sense of hospitality towards strangers.  It’s not something we see much in the U.S.  Time is too precious it seems and life is too busy to stop and show kindness.  I know this because I’m guilty of it.  But one of my favorite things about the human mind and soul is its profound ability to change.  So here’s to renewed priorities – people.

So as Angmo and I moved between towns, sometimes trekking or driving, we met person after person who had stories, opinions, and suggestions for SLC-IT.  We started each day early and ended late, completely exhausted and counting down the number of households left to go.  As tiring as talking and translating all day was for Angmo, I found that listening to a language I don’t understand and conversations I cannot be an active participant in equally exhausting.  I miss the art of conversation – I fear I may be loosing it.  Though by the end of our surveying, I was able to understand what some people were saying through certain words and body language.  In addition to our own work, we got a chance to share in the Christmas morning like feeling that comes with camera trap work.  I’ve missed that feeling that Paige and I used to get after we collected our 40 camera traps back in my Rocky Mountain Wild days.  All huddled around the computer Jigmet, Gyalson, Angmo and I would see what the last two months produced for the ongoing population assessment that SLC-IT is working on.  They got some great photos of a snow leopard marking its territory through rock scent and some great nighttime shots of a Pallas cat, which apparently is very rarely documented in Ladakh. 

And thus ended my surveying.  As much as I loved being in Sham Valley, there was something nice about coming back to my little room I call home that I may or may not be currently sharing with bed bugs.  So now its back to the office where I will spend the next few weeks entering data into spreadsheets, figuring out how to make sense of it, analyzing it, and then writing up a nice report for SLC-IT to add to the 10 year program evaluation they will be conducting next year.  To say the least, this is the part of the project I am less than thrilled about but luckily I have two visitors –J.B. and Ryan – to look forward to in mid-August!  Then the real fun begins…