A butterfly in the frozen desert

A solitary butterfly sails towards us in the bright sunlight. 

As it draws closer we can see faint black-and-red markings on its otherwise grey-white wings. We brake carefully, allowing the apollo to pass in front of the vehicle’s windscreen. On either side of the track is an unbroken carpet of freshly-fallen snow. There is absolutely no vegetation in our immediate vicinity. In the sub-zero temperature the sudden appearance of a butterfly almost mocks belief.

And yet, apollos have been observed at far higher altitudes – mountaineers have seen them on the approaches to the highest of the Himalayan peaks. 

It is the only butterfly we would see in the Spiti valley over the entire duration of our winter birding trip. Perhaps this individual has emerged from its overnight refuge in a deep crack in the rocky mountainside where conditions may have been less forbidding than in the open. And it is now flying towards the river far below where clumps of seabuckthorn could provide it some nourishment...

Over the past few days we have observed snow leopards, and ibex, and bharal, and many species of birds, but to me this butterfly epitomises the survival instinct in this hostile landscape.

A little further on, a flash of green catches my eye. The aberrant colour of the foreign object has obviously caught another's eye too.

 It is a red fox. 

And then he is off with a swirl of his fabulously luxuriant tail.

In the distance he stops, and turns to look back at us, allowing another photo.

In many places the virgin snow is patterned with animal tracks...

Our own survival in the Spiti valley has been greatly aided by the comfortable home-stay in which we are lodged. After spending the days traipsing after the birds and animals that we have come looking for, in the evenings we have looked forward to the ‘common room’.

This is a small room located in the main part of the house that our hosts reside in. 

After shedding your mud-and-snow encrusted boots and heavy jackets outside, you ascend a rustic wooden ladder, rungs worn smooth by heavy usage, and duck through a low doorway into the communal gathering place. There are mattresses laid around the bukhari. This wonderful life-sustainer is not dissimilar to other wood-burning heaters that you would come across in the Himalayas. 

However, this one has two simple, yet ingenious, characteristics:

 One, the stovepipe which vents the smoke up and out through the ceiling, has a rudimentary metal lever – open this fully and the resulting free passage of air through the bukhari fans the burning wood chips to increase heat; or partly close it to reduce heating.

Two, the metal bukhari itself is shaped like a barrel laid on its side with a flat top. The flat surface is used like a kitchen hob. 
I can still picture dishes of thukpa and momos steaming away on the hobs while copious quantities of rum are downed by the house-guests!

The common room is obviously a place to meet members of another party staying here.

They are a disparate bunch. It appears that there are only two ‘paying’ tourists, in addition to two expedition organisers and the gypsy owner.

The last is a phlegmatic ladakhi, clad in an baggy home-knitted cardigan. He is a man of few words. His smile would grow wider and his full cheeks redder with each successive shot of rum.

One of the ‘tourists’ is a young lady. The first evening she shows us a photo from the day – in which she is pictured ice-climbing! She has ice-axes in either hand, crampons on her boots, and the photograph shows her suspended from a vertical ice-fall. Seeing our looks of admiring astonishment she smiles and scrolls to an un-cropped image... actually she is just a couple of feet above the surface of a ledge beside the road, and the guide has her propped up.

The other tourist is a young finance professional from one of the Indian metros.

“I want to acclimatize properly”, he says.

He is drinking lots of fluids and is being careful with the daily physical exertion. He regularly checks his blood oxygen levels with a pulse oximeter.

On the third day he fails to appear at the common room, and on enquiring we are told that he has a “bad headache”.

It appears that the excitement of seeing a snow leopard, combined with smoking one cigarette too many, and imbibing more than his fair share of the ‘wrong’ fluids, has laid him low.

Next morning he is back to his normal cheerful self and says everything is just “amazing” (his favourite phrase) again.

Very seriously he now declares - “ I’m going to stop smoking when I get back home”.

Before we return to the birds of Spiti, perhaps I should explain the loo arrangements in this part of the world.

In the summer this would not need explaining – but in the winter Spiti is different.

Of course, there are some guesthouses that do remain open in winter.
 And yes, many do have bathrooms. But the plumbing is frozen solid. It will be for months.
Forlorn campsites can be identified by the bizarre spectacle of isolated WC’s standing abandoned in the open.

Our guesthouses do have bathrooms.

On arrival you are explained that the pipes are frozen and that the bathroom should not be used. Many guesthouse owners (from previous experience with deaf guests, I would think) have simply put padlocks on bathroom doors.

So where do you go?

Well, on our first morning in Nako we were told - “please go outside”.

But in fact this was a problem.

First, following overnight snowfall, most villagers are up very early to clear snow off their roofs. Second, the outskirts of villages are commonly patrolled by feral dogs.

It is not quite so easy to just go!

At our Kaza guesthouse we had the luxury of an old fashioned thunder-box.

Located in a corner of the compound patrolled only by the house-dog who is now your friend because you fed him a titbit last night, and notwithstanding the drafty broken-hinged door, the hole in the ground is scented!

 Yes, a thick subterranean bed of sweetly-scented willow leaves cushions your offerings – this compost pile of human manure will be used in the summer months in Kaza's pea farms.

Writing this I just remembered, we were served peas in many dishes we ate there.

On that note perhaps it would be better to add another blog-post about the birds we saw on the trip. 

Dawn view from guest-house window in Kaza

And if you are new to the blog, do have a look at two earlier posts of this trip to Spiti in the trans-himalaya. Here are the links:

http://jaipurbirding.blogspot.com/2017/03/close-encounters-with-snow-leopards-of.html

http://jaipurbirding.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-mountain-monarchs-of-trans-himalaya.html

Winter vignettes of Spiti:  a view down the valley the day before...

and up-valley the next morning...

sahdevsingh2004@yahoo.co.in

Close encounters with the snow leopards of Spiti

19th February 2017 

We round yet another hairpin bend, and there it is.

An animal is framed in our headlights at the apex of the curve. It is perhaps closer than 20 yards from us. The legs and the tail are hidden behind a low-piled berm of snow at the edge of the road. A longish ghostly grey body is glimpsed briefly in the thickening snow flurries. And then it melts away from view - moving unhurriedly down a declivity as we remain frozen in the stalled vehicle.

Then pandemonium breaks out.

'Get the torch!'

'Where is it?'... 'in my bag' ... 'which bag?'... 'how do you get the bag open'...

Precious seconds are wasted as the torch is found. Four men tumble out in excitement from the vehicle.

A few hurried paces and then we are at the very point on the edge of the road where the animal disappeared. The torchlight illuminates a steep rocky slope now covered with a smattering of fresh snow.

And there it is again. Walking down and away from our vantage point in casual grace. Then it gains the curve of the road from where we have just ascended moments earlier. From no more than 60 yards away it turns to look back at us for several seconds, the eyes reflecting the light from the torch. The falling snow swirls and eddies around us.

And then the grey ghost vanishes from view.

We have our first sighting of a wild snow leopard, and we are technically still not yet in the Spiti valley.

Late in the day we have driven up from Khab, the magnificent confluence of the Spiti and the Sutlej rivers. The village of Nako is another couple of switchbacks away in the dark above us. We have the big one from the wishlist.

Not a bad start to our winter birding trip to the Trans-Himalaya!

But we are not finished yet with this first snow leopard. The tiredness from two full days of driving up from Jaipur has melted away. The vehicle is turned around and we go straight back down the hairpin bends to see whether we can surprise the animal again. Stinging wind-driven snowflakes are ignored as the torch is flashed from an open window. The terrain is open, yet the boulders (some snow-covered, others dark) provide perfect camouflage to the snow leopard. Let alone now in the dark, even in bright sunlight it could be just a few yards away and we wouldn't spot it. Reluctantly we turn back around.

Back again at the same hairpin bend on the road, we now cast around for spoor. A steep snow-covered embankment perhaps 25 feet high tells the tale. The mint-fresh pug-marks illustrate how the animal came down in a series of bounds to the road. CV points out that the hind paws have thrust into the same points in the snow as the front paws. There are softer single depressions in the snow behind the actual pug-marks - these were made by the end of a long bushy tail thumping into the snow to aid its descent.

The adrenaline rush would see us through an uncomfortable night in Nako.

21st February 2017

The previous day we have driven leisurely up the Spiti valley from Nako to Kaza. The weather forecast has proved incorrect, and we have encountered alternating periods of sunshine and overcast conditions with occasional snow flurries. Birds have popped up at regular intervals and have kept us alert. H has rattled off the ID's of unfamiliar species. Two herds of bharal (blue sheep) seen from the road  have allowed us longer pit-stops to observe and photograph them.

We have comfortable rooms at a home-stay in Kaza for three nights.

Today the morning has broken crystal clear. Naturally it is much colder. Despite the heroics of S (who has not only driven these treacherous roads and but has also woken at nights to turn the engine of his vehicle to prevent the engine going cold), today we can't get the vehicle started. The diesel in the tank has frozen overnight.

And so, much of the morning has gone in heating the fuel tank with a primus stove, and in pouring boiling water over assorted pipes and pumps.

When we do get started for the village of Kibber, the sun reflects brilliantly off the frozen landscape. But as often happens, trouble comes in pairs. Only a few miles from Kaza, we have to stop again. Now the radiator coolant is boiling over.

From L to R (Sahdev = the author; Happy = CV; Somendra = S; Harkirat = H)

(Unaware at this moment that our vehicle will soon be hors-de-combat for a while) 

(photo courtesy - Somendra)

 Soon a convoy of jeeps overtakes us. Each vehicle has adventurous youngsters armed with walkie-talkies and other sophisticated gear. We cadge a bottle of water from them, return to Kaza, get on some bottles of coolant, and head back out to Kibber again.

Kibber has been in the news for occasional snow leopard sightings in the winter months for several years. We already have a tick on our bucket list from our first sighting near Nako, but secretly we all want a good look at a snow leopard in daylight. This could be the day. But you have only to remind yourself of Peter Matthiessen's 'The Snow Leopard', in which the author in the company of the great field biologist George Schaller, fails to actually see a snow leopard over weeks of wandering the higher Himalayas in Nepal.

On the left bank of the Spiti river is Key monastery.

From here the road narrows and loops on towards Kibber which at 4200 M is higher than Kaza (3700 M). On another off-track leading from Kibber to Chicham, in the far distance we can see some figures getting off a parked vehicle and scrambling down a steep slope. They look animated. Some of them are gesticulating towards a gorge in the background. Soon other vehicles line up behind the first, and a steady stream of people work their way down the snow slope. We decide to investigate what the excitement is all about. 

One person has just climbed back on to the road. On being asked what can be seen down below he replies - 'there is a snow leopard on a kill!'

Whaaat! 

I'm quite sure we get off the vehicle far quicker than from the time of the first sighting. In the excitement I make two small mistakes. First, I forget my gloves. Try not to laugh, but I'm actually carrying three pairs on the trip: a thin fleece inner, a woolen pair, and a leather outer. All forgotten in my haste. Second, in my bare hands I'm now clutching a spotting scope and a tripod - not really a mistake at that very moment, but in hindsight painfully so. After all, most snow leopard sightings are from hundreds of yards away, sometimes from miles away. So, the spotting scope is a necessity I think.

We have only a short steep descent to join a vocal excited group. The trick is not to follow the exact same well-trodden snow-compressed track which is now quite slippery, but instead to dig ankle-deep into the virgin snow and gain a firmer purchase on unfamiliar terrain.

A small knot of people is gathered at the edge of the gorge. I prepare to set up the tripod and the spotting scope in order to scan the opposite cliff-face. All my fingers are numb, and alarmingly my right thumb is now turning a strange shade of blue - purple even. Not good.

I turn to the nearest person - 'where is it?'

 He leans forward and nods his head -'there'.

A snow leopard is sprawled across his kill on a shelf a mere 20 yards directly below us!

So much for the spotting scope! At this distance we do not even need our binoculars to look at the snow leopard.

It is an old male. A very old male. 

I take a good glance at it, click a couple of photographs, and then I can't bear to look at it again. A strange thing to report but that is how I feel at this moment. 

I hope to explain why. And to write about a large herd of Ibex, two herds of bharal, a red fox, and of course about the birds of the trip in the next post.

sahdevsingh2004@yahoo.co.in