Wow! It has been a year and four months since my last post. Quite some time. A lot has happened since then but this blog is dedicated primarily to my time and experiences in Nepal during my research and travels. So at the expense of chronological completeness I will discuss what has happened to me during the last few days that I have been back in Nepal. This is the first time I have been back to Nepal since my last time with my girlfriend, Jenna, in the summer of 2008. I miss her companionship.

To all those who have traveled overseas you can agree that it is a tiring and disorienting experience. I traveled 7 hours to Amsterdam where I had a several hour lay-over. The Amsterdam airport is nice, clean, spiffy, and all around not too bad a place to hang out for a few. The next leg was to Bahrain, Bahrain. That is a sovereign island nation in the Persian Gulf directly east of Saudi Arabia and north of Qatar. The airport was not anywhere near as large and comfortable as the Amsterdam airport. However, it was immensely better than the Delhi airport. I was thankful for that. Jenna and I had to spend 12 or so hours in the Delhi airport the last time we traveled to Nepal. It was not fun. Refer to previous posts where I'm sure I describe the experience in more detail. However, I did manage to find a tiny Chilis Restaurant in the Bahrain airport?? Ha. It stuck out like a sore thumb and I was drawn to it like a fly. I stayed there for a couple hours eating salad because they did not have any other vegetarian fare and used the free internet. Perhaps, there is hope for the Bahrain airport! Then while getting on the plane to Kathmandu they told me my seat was changed. Lo and behold I was sitting in the first class. Not sure why but...awesome! I finally got to Kathmandu I think a million hours after leaving Detroit. At least my brain felt that way because I was traveling over a couple nights and my sleep patterns got all messed up. My friend and the program manager from the Institute for Social and Environmental Research (the place I will stay at in Chitwan and a collaborator on the research) organized to have a hotel taxi come pick me ('Neil Karter') up. My transit to Hotel Himalaya was smooth. I arrived to the Hotel about 9AM. I felt awake and sent some emails and tried getting things in order. My major objective for the first few days that I was in Kathmandu was to meet with several folks from wildlife agencies that will hopefully be interested in collaborating with me on a tiger camera trapping project. This is because their expertise and logistical support is vital for the project. Also, it is necessary to have local collaborators to receive permission for this kind of research from the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) in Nepal. The truth is that dealing with certain elements of the government structure in Nepal can be maddening. I suppose this isn't just a unique quality specific to Nepal. One thing I learned from last year was that I need to devote a great deal of time building relationships with lots of people and institutions before I can actually officially submit an application to conduct my research. As someone just expressed to me it is like nothing happens, more nothing, more nothing, and then all of a sudden within a 24 hour period all the decisions are made, papers signed, and you are on your way.

Unfortunately, I have been utterly unsuccessful in organizing meetings with people from these wildlife agencies until today (14th). Several people I wanted to meet are not even in Nepal at this time. Arggghh. I was supposed to meet somebody yesterday. I arrived full of excitement to finally start doing something only to find that he was not in the office. I called him and he said that he was called out on a last-minute meeting that he absolutely had to attend. He was deeply sorry and we re-scheduled to meet for today. Needless to say I was a little miffed. I thought that I would try to get some work done in the hotel if I was not able to meet with these people. But they are doing large-scale renovations. In midday the sound from the saws, drills, hammers, etc. start to chatter my teeth. So my productively has been nearly zero. Not to mention that jet lag can be a nasty beast. I was doing fine on my first day of arrival until 4PM arrived. I just remember a wave of exhaustion rolling over me and next thing I knew I was awake at 3AM. The same thing happened the next day. I think that I am just about re-calibrated though. I was able to get to bed around 10PM last night. Albeit with some red-eyed stubbornness.

Today I finally had a fruitful discussion with two prominent wildlife researchers. I am hopeful about the proposal and am planning on meeting the Director General of the DNPWC along with several other folks on the 20th. The DG is the guy who will grant permission so this is a big deal. I want to have everything lined up, t's crossed and i's dotted. In the meantime, I am planning to travel down to Chitwan tomorrow morning. I hope to meet with several tiger researchers down there and to begin discussing collaboration on the camera trapping research from the community forest user-groups. The community forest user groups are groups of local people who are granted the authority to manage nearby forests according to their priorities and needs. My hope is to have the forest guards from these groups assist me in selecting sites with known tiger activity to place camera traps. This is the most efficient way to do it. The forest guards are intimately familiar with the nearby forests and the doings of the resident animals including tigers.

What are camera traps? They are cameras designed to take pictures of an animal as they cross the path of the camera which is posted on a tree or post. In the case of tigers they have been used for at least 2 decades. If you set up two cameras on opposite sides of a trail then you can obtain a picture from both sides of an animal. This is particularly useful for tigers because we can use the stripe patterns of both flanks to accurately identify individual tigers. In other words, I would be able to say that a picture of a tiger at one trap is the same tiger as that caught at another based on the unique stripe pattern. The methods behind camera trapping have not changed much but the theory and analytical techniques have developed significantly such that camera trapping is often used in scientific studies of animals that are elusive and rare. Most importantly, camera trapping is non-invasive. This means you don't have to sedate an animal which can be dangerous and is no doubt a taxing experience for the wild animal. Of course the trade-off is that camera trapping data is no where near as fine, detailed, and informative as, say, collaring a tiger with a GPS collar which records its position on the globe every 5 minutes or so using a satellite orbiting the earth. The camera traps are constrained to the locations you set them and may or may not bear fruit.

Currently, I am sitting in my hotel room with earphones on to drown out the construction noise. The most magnificent thing is that I am also watching the Detroit Tigers game on TV!!! I was skipping through the channels which are 90% percent indian and came across an ESPN affiliate. It just happens to be airing the tiger's game. How cool is that! Periodically check out pictures at

http://picasaweb.google.com/nhcarter07

If you want to see pictures from our (Jenna and I) trip to Nepal in 2008 go to

http://picasaweb.google.com/jenna.a.jones1

I have posted just a few from this Nepal trip so far. I will post many more later. As I was walking around outside the hotel I saw an elephant with a couple of guys loading tree branches on its back. Jenna and I saw several elephants down in the rural areas near Chitwan National Parks but we had never seen an elephant walking around the capital city of Kathmandu. It was fun. I love elephants. They are just so unique and intelligent.

Till next time. I hope all are well.