Out in the wide world

Back in Delhi

2011-01-03T14:51:00.001-05:00

Am back in the crazy, mass-of-humanity cacophony of Delhi, horns honking, maniacal traffic, air choked with wood smoke. Great to see old friends, but am missing the thick bamboo forests, the gymnastic langurs, the peacocks, the sambar deer. The squadrons of dragonflies that hovered over the open grasslands. The midnight howling of jackals. The night sky awash with a canopy of stars. The majesty of tigers, among the world's most magnificent creatures. Missing almost daily time spent with the working elephants that are used to patrol the tiger reserve.

I love the animals.

Tiger kill

2010-12-26T10:26:00.002-05:00

We started our day today with a 7:00 AM ride on elephant back to a clearing where a tiger was devouring the sambar deer he’d killed during the night. He was the area’s alpha male, a huge cat, knawing away, ignoring the three elephants that circled him from 30 feet away. The park charged $15 per person for a few minutes with him; we were there to photograph the tourists. We returned two hours later: by then he was full-bellied and ready for a nap, occasionally hissing at one of the elephants. He was done with the show.

We got the word that a mother tiger had killed a cow outside the national park. It was near a small village, so the parks department opted to bury the kill to prevent the female and her three nearly-grown cubs from hanging around and eating it. They sent in four elephants. The mahouts were instructed to drive the cats away from the village.

The tigers were on the move as we raced back and forth in a car trying to find them. Villagers worked their fields, kids walked around and played, people rode bicycles and motorcycles along the dirt roads. It was chilling to see them engaged in the dailiness of life, oblivious to the danger.

Then we glimpsed a tiger loping through a field, chased by the elephants. A minute later, we heard a blood curdling scream. The female was so stressed that when she encountered a man he attacked. He died about an hour later. Soon after, we heard a dog screaming—she'd gotten it, too.

The cat wandered into a hotel compound and went to sleep. Her cubs stayed in the village, hunkered down in a thick stand of bamboo.

Today near Todoba Tiger Reserve, about five hours from here, another tiger killed someone. And yesterday a tiger was shot in a rice field in Uttar Pradesh.

Trying to save tigers in an overpopulated country is not easy, and both humans and tigers suffer.

Someone who was born here in Bandhavgarh and who now works as a guide told us over a beer at the end of the day that despite government claims that there are 65 tigers in the park, there are really only about 45. And in Ranthambore, another famous tiger reserve, they have lost six or seven tigers in the last two months.

Tomorrow we’ll attend and photograph the funeral. The man who died was a poor villager in his late 20s, a man who lived in a bamboo hut with his wife and two small children. Donations from the local tourism lodges will pay for the firewood for his funeral pyre, which will be lit in the middle of an open field.

To bed. I’m exhausted and numb.

Bandhavgarh

2010-12-24T22:59:00.001-05:00

Am in Bandavgarh, staying on the periphery of the famous tiger park. We head in each morning as predawn light pales the sky, driving in an open safari jeep. At that hour, the park is shrouded in mist, a veneer of frost dusting the straw grassland in wintry white. We look like mummies, wrapped in down clothing. It's not the steamy, sun-baked world one would imagine when picturing India. But the temperature climbs with the rising sun, hitting 65 or 70 F. (18 to 21 C.) by midday. We strip down layer by layer until the chill returns with the setting sun.

Much of the forest is a deciduous mix of silk cotton, teak, sal, and ebony, woven together by mammoth strangler figs and tall thickets of bamboo. We see sambar deer tall as a horse. Small and large herds of spotted deer. Two peacocks fly across the road trailing impossibly long, magnificent plumage. As we approach, big blond langurs bound away on springy legs, the gymnasts of the forest, and a pair of bushy-tailed jackals head for the undergrowth.

Estimates vary, but up to 60 tigers roam this area, slipping in and out of the chain link fence that surrounds the 1500 square kilometer park. Cattle graze within sight on the other side. Hunting them is child’s play for a tiger—and killing them invokes the wrath of the villagers.

We meet a park guard. News comes across his walkie talkie in staticky bursts: three near-adult cubs are in the area. We sit and wait, but don’t see them.

We drive through the park, dust rising in clouds behind us. We see enormous tiger prints, fresh ones, and follow them. And there she is: a female watches us briefly, then slips into the forest, reappearing further on. In side view we can see how huge she is, and how utterly magnificent. Wow.

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But the next day--we watch three tigers up close for half an hour--20 to 50 feet away!

In the Pantanal

2010-09-21T13:29:00.001-04:00

This "flooded landscape" is as dry as it ever gets, the rivers down some 12 to 15 feet. It's the end of the dry season amidst the worst drought in 40 years. The profusion of wildlife here is stunning--and it's all drawn down to the river at this time of year.

I've seen my first-ever jaguars, something I've dreamt of since I first stepped foot into Latin American rain forests two decades ago. This is the only place to see these elusive animals.

Have been in the field with biologists--and trapped and radio-collared two cats over the last three nights.

More to come.

Dirty Water

2010-07-14T23:03:00.006-04:00

This is from my article "Dirty Water: India and China share a grave environmental problem—extreme water pollution" that was just published in Scientific American Lives--a special issue that launched a new magazine. To read the rest of the story, click on the title to this post.

The hazy dawn knits river to sky on the banks of the holy Ganges river in Varanasi. Even at sunrise, the city’s 4.5-mile waterfront bustles. Bathers brush their teeth, soap themselves, and scrub their children. Legions wash laundry, gather water, and scour dishes. Men swim and lounge on ghats (steps that descend into the Ganges). Black noses and curving horns betray the presence of submerged water buffalo.

Women in bright saris gather in groups or with their families at the water’s edge. Up to 60,000 pilgrims journey to this sacred, 3,000-year-old city from across India each day. They sculpt altars in slick, gray mud, making offerings of flowers and candles. They pour Ganges water, pray, take a sacramental sip and immerse themselves in the turbid river for spiritual healing.

At the “burning ghats,” flames consume the bodies of the dead: Hindus believe casting their remains into the Ganges guides their souls to heaven. To them, this river is the mother goddess, Ganga Ma, who washes away humanity’s sins.

Four hundred million people rely on the Ganges watershed for drinking water, including Varanasi’s 1.6 million residents. But along its 1,560-mile journey from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal, the river absorbs raw sewage from 116 cities. Waste has turned these waters into a highway for viruses and bacteria, including deadly, dysentery-causing microbes like E. coli O157 and Shigella, and those that cause cholera, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever. Last year, the Indian government pledged $4 billion for river cleanup to stem the tide of waterborne disease.

But the problem of environmental water pollution extends far beyond the Ganges. Municipal waste, pesticides, and industrial chemicals foul waterways and drinking water across the globe, with the worst pollution concentrated in developing countries. If India’s waterways are the dubious poster children for sewage, then China’s waters take that role for toxic chemicals. Municipal waste is also a severe problem in China, but three decades of meteoric industrial growth have laced lakes and rivers with a witches’ brew of chemicals. Some Chinese waters are now among the most polluted on Earth.

Pangolins in peril

2010-01-18T21:47:00.006-05:00

I've written on the Asian wildlife trade many times over the last years: the Asian turtle crisis, with turtles of many species being vacuumed off the Asian continent and eaten to the brink of extinction in less than a decade. Turtles are now being shipped or smuggled from across the globe, from Africa, the U.S., and every part of the globe, valued for their meat (and the longevity it is thought to impart) and used for Asian traditional medicine.

I've also written on the trade in tiger bone and other tiger parts, focusing on India's precipitous decline--catastrophic losses that were finally admitted by the government after decades of coverups. Nearly all parts of the cat, from eyes and whiskers to genitals and tail, are prescribed for their purported medicinal and aphrodisiac powers.

This month, I have a story on the Southeast Asian trade in pangolins--shy, armadillo-ish animals. They are the most-traded mammal on the illegal wildlife black market. Prices for their meat, organs and scales has skyrocketed from $10/kilo in 1990 to between $160-$250 today. Their precipitous decline prompted re-listing of two species, the Chinese and Malayan pangolins, from near-threatened to endangered.

Asian traditional medicine needs to adopt substitutes for endangered species--and needs to substitute manufactured synthetic compounds for animal ingredients. With pressures from habitat loss, disease, climate change, and so much more--animals can no longer be taken out of the wild in large quantities for any reason. Many species cannot survive even small losses.

You can read this story online: http://www.defenders.org/newsroom/defenders_magazine/winter_2010/on_the_ground_pangolins_in_peril.php

PLASTICS

2009-12-22T02:35:00.004-05:00

The avalanche of plastic that is being produced, used and discarded across the planet has grown exponentially since these polymers first became popular during the 1950s. But this is one problem that we can truly address as individuals--though we also need to push for regulation to protect both our own health and that of a planet that is drowning in plastic.

Check out my editorial "Solutions Exist for Taming the Plastic Monster" (not my title.)

Big Coal is Worried

2009-08-06T10:14:00.003-04:00

You know they're in a corner when the dogs start snapping.

The recent discovery that the coal industry was forging letters to Congress trying to herd them away from climate legislation shows how worried they really are.

Check out this article in yesterday's NY Times: Congressman Demands Answers on Forged Letters

The last administration handed over our national parks, coastlines and mountaintops to mining and drilling, having a fossil fuels party and ignoring the growing spectre of climate change. It's more than time that we step and take serious action to mitigate greenhouse gases--and for once, put corporate interests aside for the good of the planet.

Drugs, guns, gangs--and turtles

2009-07-25T15:11:00.010-04:00

It is wild here, the stories are intense. Guns and drugs, lots of both.

Hit the ground running yesterday--4:30 rise, drove across the country and got on a Navy gunboat to explore a deserted island for hawksbill turtle nests--with an armed soldier.

Only two years ago, researchers discovered the last, best population of Eastern Pacific hawksbill sea turtles. Researcher J Nichols has jumped in here to try to quickly protect them--perhaps 100 turtles. Earlier this year, egg collecting was outlawed--up until now 95+ percent of the eggs were harvested and sold.

The big issue here is dodging the drug traffickers--some beaches and islands are totally off-limits. The police won't even enter these areas.

LONDON

2009-07-01T17:07:00.005-04:00

Am in London at the 6th World Conference of Science Journalists (WCSJ): I was lucky enough to be given a Laura Van Dam Fellowship from the National Association of Science Writers to come here. Have attended great sessions on the state of science writing, journalism, book publishing, and new media, as well as specific issues like how science innovation will be needed to address burgeoning global needs for food, water and energy amidst the growing spectre of climate change. I was thrilled to hear John Beddington, the UK's Government Chief Science Advisor, bring up the need for population control and education of women--and identify big barriers to that as one world religion that still prohibits contraception and another that discourages the education of women. This issue is one that most governments and NGOs will not touch, and to me, is the pink elephant in the living room.

Fascinating to hear a global perspective on these and other issues from European, African, Asian, Australian journalists. Particularly interesting to hear differences in health care and health care costs and marketing (particularly pharmaceutical marketing) from European and Canadian journalists.

Also had some personal time with Darwin today: stepped into Westminster Abbey and saw his tomb, and in the evening, attended a WCSJ gala at the Natural History Museum. They just moved a huge marble statue of Darwin to the head of the main stairway to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth and 150 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species. Later this year, the museum will open a brand new building named for Darwin. I had the honor of attending the event with a colleague, Victoria Costello, who was the other Van Dam recipient.

Water Wars

2009-05-10T16:31:00.002-04:00

Some say that freshwater is the new oil. Many predict that with growing population overshadowed by the spectre of climate change, wars of the future will be fought over water, not crude.

In the U.S., battles over water rights have a long history in the West, but conflicts over water--and particularly groundwater--are now occurring across the country.

Check out my recent syndicated editorial. Welcome to the Water Wars.

More dead tigers in India

2009-02-10T17:21:00.003-05:00

There's more bad tiger news from India. Nine tigers have died in Kaziranga National Park, in Assam, in the past few weeks.

Kaziranga is one of eight new tiger reserves established by the Indian government over the last year. They were created in reaction to a grim report documenting a stunning 60 percent drop in tiger numbers from just five years ago: At most 1,411 tigers—perhaps as few as 1,165—still inhabit the country, marking an all-time low.

Kaziranga was considered to be one of few places in India where the cats are safe from poachers. Apparently not, although some of the deaths were attributed to natural causes.

Read more about the state of tigers in India in my recent article: Tigers in the Tank: Can we halt the decline of India's big cats before it's too late? It's the cover story in the current issue of Defenders Magazine.

In the desert

2008-11-25T22:27:00.007-05:00

November 7th, 2008, Thar desert, Rajastan

We spent the day under the relentless scorch of the desert sun, moving across a scrubby landscape only softened by occasional low, undulating dunes. We visited a three-hut village where two men sheared wild-eyed sheep with ancient, rusted scissors that looked better suited for hedgerows. Women in dayglo-colored saris glittered with gold and silver thread against the sandy monochrome backdrop, brass water jugs, a pile of sticks or a sack of grain piled atop their heads. Midday, weathered men draped in white cotton dhotis, topped in brilliant orange or magenta turbans, lounged in the shade away from the grudging sun.

I love a man in a turban.

Here, girls are still sent off to their husband’s home in arranged marriages at 10 years old, maybe as old as 14. Extended families live together in stone or mud homes that remain closed up and tomb-like against the heat. It’s a hard life, with little water, scarce resources, and even now, heading into “winter”, heat waves ripple in 90-something degree heat midday. It hits 120 in the summer.

On the way back to our lodgings I lounged on my back, rocking on a camel cart beneath a canopy of stars. The sand glowed under the hanging sickle moon, bells tinkled on the dromedary's ankles, and a chill breeze brought goosebumps to my sunburned skin. I live for this.

OBAMA!!!!!!!!!!

2008-11-25T22:22:00.003-05:00

Although this was written three weeks ago, I am just back from India--and must post for posterity!

~~~

It’s 11:30 PM on Wednesday November 5th. The quarter moon has just risen, swollen and orange above the horizon. We arrived this afternoon at a small hotel perched atop a sand dune outcropping in the Rajastani desert. I am drunk from too many glasses of Indian red wine, celebrating Barak Obama’s victory as the next president of the United States, and I’m crying.

Being 10 ½ hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Standard time here, it was Tuesday for an excruciating day and a half before we began hearing election results. This morning, when my wakeup call jarred me awake in Jaisselmere at 6:30 AM, I flipped on the TV and began watching early results on an Indian news channel. After breakfast, an MSNBC breaking news headline announced that McCain had called Obama to concede; a group of Americans and an Italian watched his surprisingly eloquent concession speech—but FOUR minutes before president-elect Barak Obama’s speech the cable throughout the area went out!!!

We called my son Nick on our I-Phone. He held the phone up to his TV, and a group of us huddled around the phone listening to Obama, weeping. In the photo documenting the moment, we look as if we’re praying.

We Americans have elected a true statesman, a man with a heart, a brain, and a vision, to lead us.

All things are possible.

Killing the Endangered Species Act

2008-09-25T21:34:00.001-04:00

In his last days as President, George Bush is trying to ram through sweeping changes to the 35 year-old Endangered Species Act that will essentially gut protections for dwindling species. The proposal would hand decisions on potential dangers to wildlife and ecosystems over to the agencies in charge of implementing new development projects, a complete hen-in-the-chicken-coop move. Especially given a recent ethics investigation that discovered Interior Department employees cavorting with the oil company representatives they buy Gulf oil leases from--having sex with them, smoking pot and doing coke with them, accepting thousands of dollars worth of gifts from them.

And these are the people that are supposed to look at a new drilling project, a new dam, new roads, a new mine and decide if it will endanger threatened species--people with a vested interest in getting their project going, people who have traditionally chafed over US Fish and Wildlife reviews, people with no expertise whatever in wildlife or biology.

This week, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has been hammering the Administration on this and a slew of other environmental travesties wreaked over the last years. Let's hope they exert enough pressure on the Interior Department to force them to withdraw this unconscionable proposal.

Read my syndicated editorial for more info.

Quetzals

2008-05-07T11:51:00.004-04:00

I still have more to post from India--but had to jet home, meet up with my son Nick--and fly down here to Costa Rica to help him find housing--and to hang out for 10 days. Nick will be interning as a writer for the Tico Times for the next four months while shooting wildlife video footage on weekends.

We found him a room to rent in a house the day we flew in--so the next day we jumped a bus to the central mountains, two hours south of the capital. Unbroken forest blankets these low, undulating peaks, draped in clouds. This is perfect habitat for the elusive, iridescent quetzal, reputed to be the most beautiful bird in the Americas. Its feathers are metallic blue-green, with a crimson breast and white on its upper tail.

Photo credit: Steve Winter/National Geographic Image Collection

Within a few minutes we discovered a pair in a nearby tree keeping careful watch over their nest, a hollowed-out hole in a dead trunk. We spent the entire rest of the day shooting footage of their comings and goings from the nest. Wow. To even glimpse a quetzal is a spiritual moment. These birds, along with the rattlesnake, were the most revered of all creatures by the ancient Mayans. The two creatures were merged into the Plumed Serpent, Quetzal Coatl, the god of creation. Their magnificent tail feathers, measuring nearly three feet, were used to make royal clothing and ceremonial garb for priests and kings.

Back then, it was a capital offense to kill the bird. But once the conquistadors took power, quetzal feathers were traded from Mexico to the Andes, and were used as a form of currency. More recently, loss of cloud forest habitat felled for agriculture has landed the bird on the endangered species list. Climate change also plays a role: small emerald toucanets that once stuck to lower altitude have moved up the mountains with warming temperatures. They raid quetzal nests, preying on the hatchlings. I hope that forest protections here in Costa Rica can save this mystical creature.

We're headed back for the whole weekend, and hope the pair is still there!

Elephants

2008-04-25T12:07:00.008-04:00

I was in Kaziranga for their annual three-day elephant festival: a celebration of a beast long revered in India. Although Hindus have literally hundreds of thousands of gods and goddesses to choose from, many begin their daily puja with prayers to Ganesha, the elephant-headed god. There are a couple of different stories about how he ended up with a pachyderm head. One recurrent tale is that Ganesha was born as a normal human boy. His father, Lord Shiva, beheaded him when the lad came between him and his consort, the goddess Parvati—who grew so angry and overwrought that Shiva brought their son back to life by replacing his head with the first creature to wander by: an elephant. Ganesh is revered as the Remover of Obstacles and Lord of Beginnings; he is thought to protect against adversity and bring prosperity and success.

But despite this reverence, elephants are disappearing from Assam. Thousands once moved between the nearby Karbi Anglong hills and the Brahmaputra River valley; perhaps one-tenth remain. They have almost nowhere left to go. From the air it’s easy to see what’s happened: only small patches of “green measles”—scraps of forest land—dot the brown and emerald patchwork below that divides the land into tea plantations, paddies, settlements.

In the 1820s, the British discovered tea growing wild; within 50 years they had imported 85,000 workers from other parts of India, clearing the land and turning this region into the largest tea-producer in the world. Enclaves of tribal people in the hills still practice slash and burn farming, getting two or maybe three years tops from a plot before the soil erodes away. A burgeoning population with its roads, agriculture, crops, villages, cities, factories, and power plants, continues to fell the forests.

The elephants have lost their ancient corridor, their needed passageway between high ground in the rainy season and the valley and national park below in the dry months. Crossing fields and villages puts both humans and elephants at risk. Someone was trampled to death at the end of March near here—and elephants herds continue to dwindle.

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About 60 elephants were brought in for the festival. As they gathered at nearby forest guard camps the day before, I had the chance to hang out for some hours with them, touching, feeding watching them get their daily bath in the river—and even got a short bareback ride!

Happy Bihu

2008-04-20T20:34:00.002-04:00

It is a month of festivals here in Assam. A few days ago marked Indian New Year, known locally as Bihu. It’s 1930: The country began their calendar some years after the Christians and follows a lunar month.

The Assamese dance to dhols (traditional drums), banhi (bamboo flute), pepa (a curved brass and buffalo horn woodwind), also using bamboo sticks and large cymbals for percussion. Musicians, priests from nearby Hindu temples, and village dance troupes chant and sing day and night in traditional dress. They sometimes appear at the door in the wee hours—and all must rise, come out to watch and listen—and offer a few rupees when they finish. If the donation is deemed too small, the troupe begins again, drumming and singing louder and longer. The money goes to support the temples or for village improvements.

This is by no means some hollow shell of a ritual only performed for tourists. Ninety-five percent of the travelers to Kaziranga are Indians from other parts of the country here to see rhinos and tigers and elephants. There is a strong movement to keep ancient traditions vital. Even young children know these dances and tiny boys bang on drums as big as they are, taught as toddlers.

We ended the day today by visiting a Krishna temple that sits on the main highway. Most passersby stop for a quick prayer or a real puja, and truck drivers either toss coins or jump out, offer a few rupees, grab a handful of incense and roar off. We watch, shoot pictures, pray; make a quick stop in the open-stall market, head back to our lodge for a beer, samosas, dahl soup—and early sleep. Our 5:00 AM rise comes early.

Puja

2008-04-13T08:44:00.003-04:00

Once a year, most of the forest guard camps have a puja, from the Sanskrit for worship, and we were privileged to attend. I was the only woman there, and quite possible the only female to ever have visited Difalumukh Camp, nestled deep in the park interior in a restricted area.

A priest from the nearest temple officiated, garbed in a flowing white and red cotton wrap wound into a dhoti that also covered one shoulder. His hair curled to the middle of his back, and he was surprisingly lithe and youthful for his 50 years. Many participants also wore a ceremonial white scarf around their necks—trimmed in red, the Assamese colors.

The ceremony was held outdoors, under a tarp strung to shield all from the oppressive sun. The priest and two assistants placed an altar before the camp shrine, a small bamboo and thatch house for the pictures and statues of Ganesh, Krishna, and others. But the puja focused on Kalkoma, an incarnation of the Mother Goddess who is worshipped by guards in every camp throughout Kaziranga as their protector.

Krishna graced the cover of the holy book that they placed on a burlap altar. A burning wick trailed from a small clay pot filled with oil. Incense sweetened the air, with bananas for holders. Clouds of burning sandalwood rose from an ancient, rusty, well-used censer.

The priest led prayers, chanting, clapping, reverent and blissful. An elderly assistant provided clanging percussion with giant cymbals. This was not somber worship. Then they blessed each of the guard’s guns, a small arsenal piled against the walls of the shrine, and tied a red ribbon on each one.

Afterwards, the food that had been cooked in massive cauldrons over open wood fires was brought into the shrine and blessed. The holy men served a delectable feast to the crowd of 60 or so guards and workers, apportioned onto banana leaf plates: a grain salad, a delicious rice pudding-ish thing, mixed spicy vegetables, rice, and the most succulent fish I’ve ever eaten. The priests were the last to eat.

The puja was part festival. Men clustered in the shade beneath the stilted guard house to gamble over card games, chew beetel nut, smoke ganga—and behind closed doors, drink “liquid”, the local rum.

It’s not surprising that the gods are regularly appeased in ceremonies across the park. These men need protection. It’s a dangerous job. There are occasional shootouts with heavily-armed poachers. And the animals these guards are here to protect readily attack people, from rhinos, elephants and wild buffalo to tigers and cobras. It’s a hard life, separated from family for months at a time for just 5,000 to 7,000 rupees per month, about $125 to $175.

I said my own prayers for their safety, directed to any and all gods and goddesses who would listen.

In the park

2008-04-08T09:31:00.003-04:00

We drive into the western entrance to Kaziranga National Park, stop to pay entrance fees and pick up the armed park guard that will accompany us. He rides shotgun to Konwar, our local Assamese wildlife expert. We stand in the back of a small, open Jeepsi, hanging onto the rollbars as we bounce our way along a rutted dirt track. It’s the end of tourist season, the few months between monsoon downpours and broiling heat. Jeeploads of mostly-Indian tourists pour into the park.

This part of the park is swathed in elephant grass, some low, burned back to keep forestland from overtaking the landscape—and some tall enough to nearly obscure everything but the tallest pachyderms. Within two kilometers, we see maybe 30 rhinos, usually alone, a mother and calf—and in one place, a male pursuing a female.

We finally pass into the restricted area of the park, driving through an area studded with bombex trees, tall, with branches extending out at right angles, geometric and Dr. Suess-like. The forest thickens, woven with groves of shiny, palm-like rattan. We pass within yards of an elephant herd feasting on their favorite delicacy.

We drive down a steep, muddy slope, bear to the right, and we pass a big male rhino, just 10 feet off the road. He lowers his head and tears after us, a careening 6,000-pound tank. It’s been raining and we fishtail in a mire of muck, the rhino gaining until I can almost reach out and touch his huge horn. Hard to believe, but over short distances, these prehistoric-looking behemoths can hit 35 mph. Konwar, our driver and guide, floors it. Then, suddenly, he just stops in his tracks. He watches for a minute, ambles into a wall of grass and disappears. A story on this animal is one of the assignments that has brought me here.

Kaziranga National Park is home to at least 70 percent of the world’s remaining rhinos—perhaps 2,000, according to Pallub Kumar Deka, the park’s western range officer. It’s a 200 square kilometer expanse, bordered on the north by the mighty Brahmaputra River, ringed by a network of paddies, tea plantations, crop fields and villages, with the main east-west highway cutting through a small corner. It’s a tough job to keep both animals and villagers safe.

To Kaziranga

2008-04-05T21:52:00.005-04:00

Through morning streets of a waking Delhi to the domestic airport. Legions of men and saried women en route to work: walking, riding, driving. Clustered at bus stops. Sardined into buses with limbs poking out doors and windows. Street dwellers emerge, dirty and disheveled, from corrugated lean-to’s, washing and cooking and eating beside the road.

Gut-dropping turbulence and a three-bounce landing and we arrive in Guwahati. Then comes the dangerous part: five hours on the main east-west highway that runs through Assam. A two-lane nightmare of near head-ons cut through red-earth rich land of paddies and palms, a palette of green, small towns built in cement block and bamboo. A flat tire gives us a brief glimpse into a small village.

For the last few miles, the park hugs the northern perimeter of Kaziranga National Park. I glimpse the hulking gray mass of a rhino in the distance. Forty hours door-to-door, and I am in one of Asia’s most amazing wildlands.

INDIA

2008-04-04T03:12:00.003-04:00

Departure: Tuesday, 8:30 PM, Newark
Arrival: Wednesday, 8:15 PM, New Delhi

Awaken from seven hours of dreamless sleep at 35,000 feet, down an Indian breakfast, land and disembark, disoriented, into the raucous clog of Delhi traffic. Spend an hour inching along the perilous, unpredictable main artery connecting the city to the international airport. Our Sikh driver joins the staccato symphony of screeching horns as we barely move through the jerky, clotted flow of cars, lorries and scooters, of tuk-tuks, of dodging pedestrians and stray dogs, the jam breaking only after we pass a holy cow, lazily masticating as she blocks 1½ of the roadway's two lanes.

Spicy, fragrant dinner with nocturnal friends, outsourcers who design for American companies and work until near the close of West Coast business, 5 AM. I try to sleep at 3:00. The night is windwhipped: the local watchman’s police whistle, a chorus of yapping dogs, and sonorous chanting from a nearby temple rise and fall in gusts, and I listen until dawn.

My senses awaken: I’m in India.

Nearing blast-off!

2008-03-30T19:18:00.002-04:00

Am in that pre-departure flurry as I get ready to leave for India on Tuesday: a 14-hour direct flight to Delhi. An overnight in the capital, a three-hour afternoon flight to Guwahati, a five-hour drive through the Assamese countryside, and I'll be there: Kaziranga National Park, about 38 hours door-to-door. Will be working on a series of stories, some that I pitched to editors nearly two years ago! It will be a wild three weeks in the field, in one of the few places left in Asia--and in India--that is home to the big, dangerous animals that have all but disappeared elsewhere: tigers, Asian elephants, Indian one-horned rhinos, king cobras, and more. Will write from the other side!

An In-there Experience

2008-03-17T09:55:00.001-04:00

I just had an adventure, not a globetrotting out-there experience—it was an in-there experience, an institutional experience. One day, eating became a liability. Any old meal left me writhing my way through the night until I ended up in the Emergency Room. Since I wasn’t bleeding profusely or about to “code blue” on them on the spot, the word “shortly” took on a whole new meaning over the nine-plus hours I spent there.

Afternoon bled into evening and into the wee hours of the morning. They imaged the intimacy of my insides in various ways as I gazed with detached fascination at my organs pictured on computer screens. Gall bladder. Liver. Duodenum. Spleen.

They admitted me, forbidding food or liquid from midnight to after surgery—8:00 PM that night. I knew the few sips I snuck wouldn’t kill me, and my voice was cracking on the flurry of phone calls that came in on my cell phone.

In the end, I gave my gall bladder back to the hospital I was born in. They took it and my one huge gall stone out through four small holes. How do they do that? Brings to mind the same kinds of questions I have when I see a ship in a bottle. Laparoscopic surgery is amazing: it’s miraculous how quickly I’ve healed in just two weeks. So different than the same surgery my mother suffered when I was growing up—that left a diagonal eight-inch Frankenstein scar across her belly.

I asked the doc if I could have my stone, but it had to go to the lab. He claims he showed it to me after he’d put me back together, but I have absolutely no memory of our little show ‘n tell.

When I went for my checkup the other day, I asked the doc why I’d formed a gall stone. He thought in my case it was probably a bad roll of the genetic dice. Then he examined my four holes, grinned at me and told me to have a nice life—and goodbye!

The Lack of Presidential Debate

2008-02-24T18:08:00.001-05:00

I am deeply disturbed by the very limited scope of public debate on crucial issues—and by the questions posed to our roster of presidential candidates in every debate I’ve witnessed. The environment isn’t being addressed at all. Why aren’t they being asked the hard questions, like how to move towards clean renewable energy—and how they plan to quickly, effectively address climate change? What will they do about our astronomical budget deficit? How will they change the trajectory that is dumbing down America—and provide a decent education for our kids? What do they plan to do about controlling pollution, protecting our ever-dwindling forest lands, wetlands, and wildlife? How will they address the health care crisis so that all Americans have health insurance? How will we get out of Iraq?

Hoboken winter

2008-02-20T19:01:00.003-05:00

Okay, I’m at home in Hoboken, NJ, and we’ve hit the doldrums of winter. Except we really haven’t had much winter here, a couple of stretches of really cold days punctuated by 40, 50, 60 degree days. A couple of bedraggled plants on my deck never died off this year.

Sometimes writing on the environment is really a challenge. I recently published a syndicated editorial on the oceans—titled "Oceans In Trouble." I hadn’t written on ocean issues in a couple of years. There are so many scary and deeply upsetting environmental issues, but the state of the oceans is really bleak. Unless we act quickly to change the massive amount of wildlife we are taking from the sea—and address what we are putting into it, from sewage, plastic and other pollutants to the carbon dioxide we’re pumping into the atmosphere that is absorbed by the oceans—we could essentially empty the sea of life within my son’s lifetime. I find that really hard to wrap my head around. The ocean is so vast, seemingly so limitless, but its resources are finite and its ability to store carbon and pollution without turning into a toxic soup are limited. But we can change the trajectory with public outcry and political will!

Jaisselmer and Jodpur

2007-12-26T00:53:00.002-05:00

All these photos were made on a quick wander inside the walled city...and in a small village nearby.

Priests in a Jain temple.

In the desert

2007-12-19T22:59:00.001-05:00

In Jaisselmer, I spent a few hours in the desert on camelback, kicking up sand as I jogged along trying to sync with the weird, wave-like rhythm of my camel's gait. So different than a horse.

It was my first real peek into a life where a every drop of moisture is so precious. Where strong village traditions still thrive. I'll return to these Rajastani desertlands...

Outside Jaisselmer

2007-12-15T09:06:00.001-05:00

Rajastan is a psychedelic swirl of color. These pictures were made in a small village outside Jaisselmer, a harsh, desert world where temperature rise into the 90s even in early "winter." It's an agricultural life, with families dependent on their goat herds for survival.

Documenting Delhi

2007-12-12T03:56:00.001-05:00

During my last two weeks in India, I was an “expert” on a National Geographic Expeditions tour through India's northern triangle: Delhi, Rajastan, Agra. On this part of my trip, I was in photo heaven, documenting the brilliant swirl of life that is much of India. Here’s a peek at Delhi. Will post pictures for the rest of the week.

At the India gate.

Pilgrim at the Qtub Minar.

Streetkid.

At the Qtub Minar.

At the Friday Mosque.

At Hanuman's tomb.

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At the Friday Mosque.

Full moon in Kaziranga

2007-12-04T13:17:00.001-05:00

Saturday, October 27, Kaziranga National Park

Today I have a touch of “Delhi belly.” Here, going off to “pick the flowers” (a Cambodian euphemism) is a perilous affair. The guards get really nervous about letting you out of their sight, and hover nearby. They insist that you clap your hands loudly all the way to your “spot.” Thick swarms of mosquitoes descend as you squat. But worse yet, in the still-wet areas, a small army of black jooks (leeches) stand on end, flailing around, jerky bio-sensing devices that hone in on their target—and then inch their way towards you from all sides, a relentless, creepy army. They inspire the same panic in me that I feel watching “Night of the Living Dead” or Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” No matter how quick I am—and believe me, I don’t dally—they are climbing my boots and crawling into my pant legs as I flee.

Late afternoon we headed off to a remote sector of Kaziranga to spend the evening out on poaching patrol with park guards. On the way there, we encountered a small group of elephants: two mamas, two young babies, and an older calf. They stood knee-deep at the perimeter of a pond, placidly munching water hyacinth. We watched, spellbound for nearly an hour.

We four-wheeled it through some mucky, rutted terrain, maneuvering over small fallen trees and through runoff-carved ditches to reach a large lake just before nightfall. Six guards hung around, snacking and talking around the fire (lit to chase off the millions of bugs that swarmed nearby), waiting for dusk to head out. Suddenly, a series of shots echoed across the water. Half the guards took off to investigate. One guard was glued to his walkie-talkie for the next hours, tensely awaiting news. Things were getting hotter in the park: just two nights before, the 12th rhino this year was killed by poachers inside the park. Another six were shot (and de-horned) outside park boundaries.

A heavy moon rises above the horizon, orange and swollen. At home, this is the Harvest Moon, children are preparing their Halloween costumes. Shamanic elders say that at this time of year, the veil between our world and the Unseen World is at its thinnest. Trick or treating children seem many worlds away.

The guards insisted we stay in camp for safety’s sake. Talking around the fire, we learned that they sometimes stay on patrol for two, three, even four months at a stretch. It’s a tough life, living in isolation in a hot climate amidst many dangerous animals. Besides the big ones, the tigers, rhinos, elephants, there are also cobras, kraits, monitor lizards, and a multitude of stinging and biting things. The guards only get a few day’s leave at home with their families between posts. These dedicated men are unsung heroes.

It took over an hour to maneuver our way out of the park. Along the way, we glimpsed a mother rhino and her calf, flushes of night birds, and a water buffalo, ghostly in the silvery light.

We later learned that each of the eight reports we heard that night were warning shots fired by three guards who were attacked by a rhino, a tiger, and an elephant respectively. They must have been close encounters, because budgets are slim here and guards don’t waste bullets. Maybe, like people, wildlife goes a little wild on the full moon. No one was hurt—animal or human.
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Back on the main road, Konwar, our amazing guide and driver, deftly avoids a dozen near-head on collisions with pedestrians and vehicles of all sizes. I barely flinch anymore. We hunker down against the wet chill that descends each night with the loss of the sun. It is a magical evening. Each wooded area we pass blinks with brilliant constellations of fireflies. Outside houses and shops, lines of tiny oil lamps twinkle along walkways, fence posts, windowsills. Important festivals mark wintertime, and in this sacred season it an especially auspicious time for puja: prayer, rituals, and offerings to the pantheon of Hindu deities. Tonight’s full moon makes this a blessed night, and everyone adds their own light. I close my eyes and offer a prayer for these people, for these animals, for us all.

Speaking up for the wild things

2007-11-30T10:37:00.001-05:00

Friday, 10/26 Kaziranga

When I’m traveling, I so often wake long before first light, living a day life, so completely different than my normal night owl existence at home where I’m frequently up writing until 1 or 2 AM (and waking after many are already at work.) On either end of the day, it's quiet and allows time for reflection, a kind of silent focus that we only find in small corners of our too-connected, crazy electronic lives.

This morning I came across this quote when I checked my email on our satellite setup:
"Someone must speak for them. I do not see a delegation for the four footed. I see no seat for eagles. We forget and we consider ourselves superior, but we are after all a mere part of the Creation."
--Oren Lyons, ONONDAGA

As we head to the park just past dawn, these words echo. In my life as a photographer, people and culture are my fascination. But as a writer and editor, being a voice for conservation and for the creatures we share the planet with has been my driving force. They all fascinate me—even the ones I’m wary of (OK, wary is weak: the things I’m seriously creeped out by or scared to death of) like stinging/biting bugs, poisonous snakes, scorpions—and leeches. So much of the world’s wildlife and wild places are in such dire straits: producing my first book last year, “State of the Wild 2006: A Portrait of Wildlife, Wildlands, and Oceans” was a long labor of love, and left me hugely depressed for months.

But I think of the poet Allen Ginsberg, who again and again layed down on the railroad tracks leading from Rocky Flats nuclear munitions plant. He was arrested numerous times, drawing attention both to the environmental impact of the plant on the pristine Rocky Mountain landscape and to his ardent anti-war stance—but as a Buddhist, he did so without attachment to outcome. He just needed to put right action out into the world. Adopting a similar attitude allows me to write on environmental issues without feeling like I want to slit my wrists.

As the rest of the house sleeps

2007-11-23T10:01:00.000-05:00

Writing through curtained light as the rest of the house sleeps. I’ve been up since 4 AM, I’m home in Hoboken, and it’s Thanksgiving. Stuck in zombie jetlag limbo. At an American Museum of Natural History lecture by my zoologist friend Alan Rabinowitz the other night, I struggled to stay conscious, nodding like a narcoleptic through the last half of his talk. He was outlining his 10+ year struggle to save tigers in Myanmar, chronicled in his new book "Life in the Valley of Death: The Fight to Save Tigers in a Land of Guns, Gold, and Greed." Steve (my partner) worked with him there on a story for National Geographic when Alan was fighting to establish what has become the largest tiger reserve in the world outside of India, a tract the size of Vermont.

It’s a particular kind of shock returning home from India. The world drains of color and sound—hi-tech, orderly, slick, commercial. No holy cows blocking major thoroughfares. No crazy weave of pedestrians, motorbikes, tractors, trucks, rickshaws, buses, and livestock vying for roadspace and trying to stay alive amidst the flowing chaos. No vehicles driving down the wrong side of the street.
The cacophony of horns, day-and-night explosion of Diwali fireworks, the blare of music through scratchy speakers, the hawkers—all silenced. Here, women fade into the black-garbed uniform of hip, elegant New York. I miss the dayglo-colored saris of Rajastan’s women, the glitter of their nose rings, arms loaded with bangles, the glint of sun on sequins and gold and silver. Rappers think they have the corner on bling. They have no idea.

Over the next days, I will put up entries I was unable to post during my last few weeks in India. But for today, I am thankful for having had the opportunity to spend time in that most amazing country, am grateful for the love of family and friends—and look forward to breaking my usual status as a pescetarian (a “vegetarian” who sometimes eats fish) with Thanksgiving turkey and stuffing. Blessings to all on this Thanksgiving day!

In Kaziranga

2007-10-31T14:59:00.001-04:00

For the last days, we’ve risen at first light, spending long days inside Kaziranga National Park, in northeastern India. We ride in a small, open Jeepsi, with a rifle-toting park guard riding shotgun. Standing up in back, clutching the roll bar, I have a full-sky view. It also keeps me from getting beaten to hell bumping along these rain-mangled dirt roads.

Much of the plain is swathed in 12- to 15-foot high elephant grass, tall enough to conceal even the largest pachyderm residents. Expanses of water appear everywhere: temporary ponds formed during the just-finished monsoon season, lakes, ponds, and the mighty Brahmaputra and its tributaries that cut through the park, swollen beyond their banks.

In some corners of the park, these grasslands give way to bands of lush, tropical woodland, woven with vines as thick as my thigh, blanketed in rattan and ferns, flitted and fluttered over by an endless array of birds, bugs, and butterflies.

There’s rhinos, rhinos everywhere, like gray, prehistoric armored tanks. They’re usually solitary, but we’ve also seen some mothers paired with calves. In close proximity, we have to be careful. These animals can be ornery, may charge unprovoked—and could easily tip the Jeepsi. And even though the big males can weigh in at over 6,000 pounds pounds, they can hit 35 mph over short distances, making them incredibly dangerous. Fun fact: they are the world’s fourth largest land mammal (after three species of elephant).

This park is home to 70 percent of the world’s remaining Indian rhinos. They were hunted nearly to extinction, with perhaps 100 left alive by the early 1900s. Today, about 2,500 are split among six protected areas in India and Nepal, and they remain endangered.

But there’s far more to see than just rhinos. I glimpsed my first-ever tiger in the wild yesterday, crossing the road and slipping into tall grass. Monitor lizards bask in the sun on the road. Uncountable birds flit and soar, storks, pelicans, kingfishers, eagles—and so many species I can’t identify. When I return in January for the huge bird migrations, I’ll bring a birding guide.

Two stories have brought me here: one on a wildlife rescue/rehabilitation center and another on the endangered Indian rhino. My long-time partner, Steve Winter, is here shooting a story on the park for National Geographic. Much of his work on this story is being shot with remote cameras: he’s set up 11 of them throughout the park.
~~~~~~~~

Out at 5:50 AM this morning with an anemic sun peeking over the horizon, headed into the western section of the park. A filmy gray veil shrouds the landscape in morning mist, mysterious and otherworldly. Each day, we check, move, service the camera traps, walking into the grasses or into the forest on animal trails. The thick black mud is imprinted with deep elephant and rhino tracks. Stepping over such massive prints, some over a foot across, makes me almost expect to encounter a stegosaurus languidly munching on a blanket of water hyacinth around the next bend. These trails are also marked with a highway of tiger pugmarks and hoofprints from water buffalo, sambar, and hog deer.

A tiger came through one of the traps we checked today, snapping beautiful self-portraits. But one of the three flashes had died, and another was smashed by passing elephants. So we spent an hour repairing the mess. The entire time we heard nearby rumbling. It seems we had split an elephant herd that was moving through the area (perhaps the vandals that knocked down the flash?), and they weren’t happy about it. The guard was at the ready, all the while banging his knife on the car and barking sharp, guttural noises.

Sending this via satellite Internet…for now, to bed. Wiped. Another 4:30 AM rise looms too soon.

Hello from Kaziranga National Park, Assam, India

2007-10-22T09:36:00.001-04:00

Well, I’ve been initiated: when I stripped off my sweaty clothes after an afternoon at the Centre for Wildlife Rehabilitation (CWR), my leg looked like I’d been in a car wreck, rivered with blood. I’d heard that the area was crawling with leeches after extreme monsoon rains that displaced entire villages earlier this month—and sent wildlife fleeing from the flooded national park. I never saw the culprit. I’d heard that they inject an anticoagulent to better gorge on their victim’s blood—and I’m amazed at what an effective chemical it is as I watch my blood still oozing from two small bites two hours after the sucker fell off of me.

I picked up the bloodthirsty hitchhiker while photographing a small herd of orphan elephants at the Centre. A pair of them were under three months old, still scrawny, milky-eyed infants. They stumbled around looking lost, following the older calves and the keeper who had become their surrogate mama, always seeking physical contact. One had been rescued from a 15-foot drainage ditch in a nearby tea plantation. The other had been separated from its herd and kept by villagers until it was so sick that it almost died. Traces of a rope burn circled its neck, and someone had slashed its trunk nearly through. Though it had healed in the two months that the animal had been tended here, the tiny trunk bore a ropy scar and kinked off at a 30 degree angle.

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Wildlife here is in trouble. Since the turn of the millennium, Kaziranga’s elephant herd has continued to dwindle, with at least 20 individuals killed so far this year. Poaching isn’t the problem—the big, old tuskers disappeared years back, shot for their ivory. Most of the casualties are the result of run-ins with local farmers. The animals are speared or shot as they rampage through the subsistence plots that barely sustain these people.

But the Indian rhinos are another story. Their horn is worth its weight in gold on the black market as a highly prized ingredient in traditional Asian medicine. So far this year, 17 rhinos have been poached out of Kaziranga National Park, which is home to the largest population left in the world. Huge areas of the park are inaccessible by jeep for whole chunks of the year, and the Forest Service is often outgunned. India has launched an all-out war, with a shoot-to-kill policy on poachers.

One night last month, park guards happened to be nearby when shots rang out. They returned fire, and the poachers fled. But they were sharpshooters, hitting the huge female twice in the head. She stumbled for a kilometer until she fell over and died. When Anjan, the CWR vet came the next day to examine her, he noticed she was engorged with milk: she was a mom. Park staff launched an all-out search, and the 18 month-old calf was found hiding in the head-high grasses. They tranquilized her, loaded her 650-pound frame onto a stretcher and into a wildlife ambulance, and brought her to the Centre. She’s still in shock, eating little, lying listlessly on the grass in her paddock.

She will be raised here for two years. Eventually, she will be released, returned to her own kind. Hopefully, the wild will be a safer place by then.