Journey of a Birder!!! Chapter 1- Nepal

This is a story of the journey undertaken by a birder. 
The bitter-sweet journey that brought him closer to himself. 
The journey that will be his forever!

Himalayan red crossbills, the elusive bird that has never been studied in the history of man-kind. Red crossbills are being studied all over the world but not in Himalayas... Why? Why is no one studying them in Himalayas? This question hounded me, day in day out, until I gave in and said I want to study Himalayan red crossbill for my Ph.D. dissertation. We all decided that I needed to do pilot trip to check the feasibility of the project.

One and half a month to cover Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, West Bengal, Arunachal Pradesh. Starting from central Himalayas to the Eastern Himalayas.

Lets do it!

I started the journey from Kathmandu. I had barely reached Kathmandu and I was hounded by various tour guides and tour companies asking me to go on a tour with their companies. Finally I decided to take a cab to the location where all the tour companies are located- Thamel. The very first location that I had to cover was "Langtang National Park". As the legend has it is among the most breathtaking places one can visit. The bus ride from Kathmandu to Dhunche, the starting point for my trek in to Langtang National Park" was 8 hour long. Most of the passengers would sit within the bus but the guides would sit on the roof of the bus, I was really curious and decided to join my trekking guide on top of the bus. As the bus turned and bounced along the rocky Himalayan roads, I had the most gripping and exhilarating view, I could ask for.

It was evening when I had reached Dhunche- the starting point of my trek in to Langtang National Park.

The view for lay ahead of me left me spellbound, the photographs do no justice to the place, the beauty was as if the entire place was under a magical spell which brought everything to life.

A few pics showing the view from my hotel in Dhunche:

 We stayed overnight at Dhunche but left early morning at 4 am for Langtang National Park looking for the elusive Himalayan red crossbills.

Oh! The birds were everywhere, it was a paradise, the very first bird that I saw was little pied flycatcher and it just kept getting better and better from there on! Imagine a kid in a candy land filled with all kinds of candy and toys, that was me!!! I was beyond myself and kept pinching myself!!!

It was at this bridge that I came across the beautiful "Plumbeous Redstart" It would hop over rocks looking for insects and fan out its beautiful tail and gracefully swing it. 

It was getting closer to the lunch time and the climbing with around 15 kg of backpack had started to show its effect on me but we were lucky to reach a small place to eat just in time. 

The place where we had our lunch :

This is me standing in a small farm right behind this lodge. We had been climbing now for 9 hours continuously. We would often stray off from the path into steep slopes in search of the bird.

Our lunch being cooked:

After lunch we started heading out in the search of the elusive Himalayan crossbill. Though the crossbill was nowhere in sight or heard but the majestic size of the bracket fungi had me spell bound:

The immense number of epiphytes and the size of the hemlocks was overwhelming. The species interactions and functioning of an ecosystem, it was so neatly laid out that I could see the arrows and various interaction diagrams overlay the slide of landscape in front of me:

And yes I did use my field guide as a scale, for a long time he kept posing and I did not want to break his bubble but later on I had to burst his bubble...Ooooppppsss!!!!

It was starting to get dark now and we could see dense growth of hemlock trees block the sky, Coal Tits, Great Tits, Green-backed Tits, Black-lored Tits, Rufous-vented Tits, Great Barbet, Asian House Martin or Nepal House Martin (I am not sure as it was dark and I had tough time looking at the colors), Himalayan Bulbul, Brown-throated Treecreepers, Nuthatches, Sunbirds, Grosbeak, Himalayan Bluetail, Pipits, Robins, Yuhinas etc. etc. were all over the place.   I could not take pictures off all  or most of them as I was more occupied looking at them or if I tried my camera would not focus (It's focus speed is so fast that the Arctic Tern would finish the migration but my camera would still be trying to focus!!!)

 

We had been hiking for 13 hours now, the GPS said we had covered around 30 km. We had started climbing from the river which can be seen at the base of the the valley.

Right next to the Hemlock forests there was a lodge where we decided to crash for the night. It was one of those cozy little lodges: 

The view from my window:

Next day morning we set out as early as 3 am in the morning and started to go higher up till the edge of the treeline or above it. 

As we were climbing, ended up startling this Yak and it startled us too. 

 However the dreamy journey was cut short as I was bitten by a random dog at 5200m elevation and we had to hurry down to the nearest town for me to get anti-rabies shots. We decided to take a short-cut through the forests, probably to make it to hospital in time... We got lost mid-way. After hours of wandering we reached a point from where we could see the village that was around 7-8km from the nearest hospital.

We saw amazing array of flora and fauna ranging from antelopes to deer to bears and yes off course birds! Nutcracker and Yellow-billed blue Magpie kept following us for quite some time. At one point we came across a bridge that was broken and while I was doing calculations for the speed at which we would need to jump across to make it, my guide went around the broken bridge near a tiny water fall and made it across.

  

It was starting to get dark now and we were still somewhere (I still don't know where we were)

However after hours of wandering we were able to make it back and as soon as we reached the village (8 km from hospital) I was greeted by the sight of this cute little baby.

Immediately after dinner we left for the hospital. 8 km more aaaaaggghhhh.... I will not make it!!!