Entomological Expedition

We were two, and then we were one. In mid April, R. had to leave India - a.) because his visa was about to expire, and b.) because he got an awesome job leading a fur seal research project on a remote Alaskan island, and hey, if you've got to work now and then to make some money, you might as well be roaming rugged island cliff-tops, observing seals and racking up your bird life-list.  So he left, and I was sad.  But being a resilient climate change adaptation researcher (haha - resilient?  Climate change?  Get it?) I decided what better way to recover from my moroseness than to participate in an entomological research expedition in a remote national park in northern India!

At the Fulbright conference back in March I made the acquaintance of a Fulbright Senior Scholar, an entomologist and evolutionary biologist who was planning a bug-collecting expedition in the middle Himalayas in collaboration with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII). I jumped at the invitation to return to my biological field researcher roots and participate. So it came to pass that on a humid morning in early May I arrived by auto-rickshaw at the Dehradun headquarters of the Institute to meet the field team.

The next day the entomologist, three PhD students from WII and I traveled by land rover from Dehradun north into the Himalayan foothills. The first town we passed through was Mussourie, the place where I spent my first three months in India doing language study. We stopped only long enough to buy bananas, however, and then continued out of town down the road towards Kempty Falls.  The landscape became more densely forested, the terrain steeper. For eight very uncomfortable hours we navigated rural,bumpy roads, dodging the occasional bus and shared land rover taxi. Finally, as darkness began to fall, we arrived at a Forest Department lodge on the outskirts of Govind National Park in the far north-west corner of Uttarakhand state. I stumbled out of the land rover, lay down in the grass, and attempted to un-scramble my internal organs from the long ride.

After a quick drive to the trail head the next morning we were off, hiking a well-used trail connecting villages farther up the road-less valley.  In addition to me and the four researchers, we were accompanied by six porters from the village near the trail head. These very personable and enthusiastic young men were a pleasure to hike with - not only did they without fail produce delicious meals at our every improvised campsite, but they listened with serious expressions to my garbled Hindi without ever once rolling their eyes.

Four days later we staggered out of a cold and snow-crusted forest onto a sunny grass-covered hilltop above the treeline. The mountains of the middle Himalaya rose to the north against the vivid blue sky. Even at this altitude purple rhododendron bushes gave color to the hillsides, and we briefly spotted a yellow pine martin cavorting on a lower slope. Everyone dug their cell phones out of deep pockets, hoping to catch the signal that was inaccessible further down the slope.  

We didn't discover any entomological marvels, but got a close look at a beautiful and rarely visited corner of the country. This hilly land in the northwest of Uttarakhand is known as the Garhwal. Garhwali and Hindi are the main languages spoken in these parts, as well as mountain dialects from the neighboring state of Himachal Pradesh. Several times on the road we passed migrant Gujar people, grazing their buffalo in the high mountain pastures to escape the sudden spring-time heat on the plains to the south.

Garwali traffic jam

These land rover taxis fit 12 inside and another 5 on the roof!

Skull of a langur monkey, found along the trail

Local women out gathering fodder

 Garhwali orthoptera

Mountain rhododendron

Lepidoptera

Yellow pine martin

Chapattis for dinner!

Himalayan porcupine quills

Everest house to Everest base camp

On my last weekend in Mussourie I went in search of a little-known landmark on the far side of the saddle ridge on which the town is perched. On a grassy lawn cropped close by wandering cattle about 6 km to the west of Mussourie lays the remains of a house once owned by Sir George Everest, British Surveyor-General of India from 1830 to 1843 and the namesake of Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain in the world. The mountain was named by the Royal Geographic Society upon the recommendation of Andrew Waugh, George Everest’s successor.

The house is now owned by the Archeological Survey of India, but is in an advanced state of crumbleage, covered in graffiti and carpeted in cow dung. It’s still a very atmospheric place, however, with fantastic views down into the Doon Valley.

Without ever thinking about it too much, I always thought that Mt. Everest was called such because it went up and up forever! Mt Everest is in fact 29,029 ft. (8,848 m.) tall. I know this because I climbed to the base camp, cast my eyes up to the summit, and said “Dang, that’s high!” More to come – ascent to Everest (base camp)!





...and an adorable puppy that was cavorting around the nearby teahouse.

Last Images of Mussourie

My time of intensive language study in Mussourie is now finished. For three months I’ve enjoyed the cool air and tree-covered hillsides of this wonderful little town, all the while knowing that this protected little aerie is quite different from the India that most people experience. On clear days, looking down into the Doon Valley and the scrum that is Dehradun, I could almost hear and smell the ruckus of humanity down in the plains. Well it’s now time to join the ruckus! I’m headed to Delhi to meet up with my NGO, but first a visit to one of India’s premier conservation areas, Corbett National Park and Tiger Reserve. And then, a quick visit to Nepal. And then, dear reader, I will actually commence my research.



Back alley cow-like beast.

This clear line across the sky is called the winterline – apparently Mussourie and a few places in Switzerland are the only places in the world where you can see it. Visible only in the fall, it comes about through the combination of an evening temperature inversion and dust in the atmosphere.

Our local view of the Himalayan foothills.

A chilly breakfast of veg. omelet and chai before class with R. at Anil’s Café.

The man who cooked for us and his family.

The competent teachers of the Landour Language School.

Happy Diwali!

November 5th was Diwali, the Festival of Lights, perhaps India’s most important religious holiday. Diwali celebrates a story from the Hindu Ramayana in which Lord Rama returns from the jungle after a 14-year exile. To celebrate the return of their king and to guide him home, the people of the city of Ayodhya illuminate the kingdom with oil lamps and fireworks.

In terms of decorations and activities, Diwali is like the noisy lovechild of Christmas and the 4th of July. In the early evening of Friday, Nov. 5th we walked down the hill into town, admiring the houses and shops decorated with strings of lights and garlands of plastic flowers. People were out in droves, buying sweets (mitai) and small presents for their families. One common candy that I sampled was crystallized pumpkin, which tasted more like unadulterated sugar than it did pumpkin, but was totally delicious! As it began to get dark, people put little clay dishes with oil and wicks out on their doorsteps, casting tiny flickering lights to guide Lord Rama home from his banishment.

We ate dinner in a shop in the Landour bazaar, and on emerging an hour later into the dark, found ourselves in Mogadishu rather than Mussourie! Fireworks are another major component of Diwali, and from about 8pm the youth of the nation was out on the streets, letting off all manner of firecracker and explosive noisemakers (appropriately known as “bombs”). Total chaos ensued as the narrow streets echoed with the boom and crack of colorful explosives. One popular game seemed to be “drop a sonic boom firecracker right behind the foreigners and scare the s*** out of them”. I didn’t enjoy this game so much, but the whole city rumbling with light and noise was a sight to see.

As we walked up the hill towards home, the lights of Dehradun down in the valley became visible. It looked like there was a civil war going on down there, with flashes and sprinklings of color blossoming every second amidst the city lights! I hate to think about the number of kids that may have lost a finger or two during the course of the evening, but everyone who didn’t blow their hands off surely had a great time.




These next two pictures are of men making a super sticky-sweet dessert called (I think) gulabi, which also means "pink"

Kempty Falls and killer street food

One of the most popular tourist destinations near Mussourie is Kempty Falls, about 15km to the northwest along a sickeningly twisty road. It’s a beautiful place, although it suffers from rather a shocking failure of development planning, with an unsightly clutter of teashops and tatty trinket stalls stretching in either direction along the road from the Falls. After a few little rapids and mini-falls upstream, the river empties itself down a rock face into a natural pool, full of Indian tourists from Delhi cavorting in the chilly water. The area was first developed in about 1835 by a British army officer named John Mekinan. The name Kempty probably derives from “camp-tea”, as the Brits during colonial rule would organize their tea parties here.




















One major up-side of Kempty Falls –awesome street food! I patronized a grilled-corn saleswoman, as well as a dude with a pretty basket of goodies, including chickpeas, onion, tomato, salt and lime, which he mixed up with a few deft pinches and swirls. The result: a delicious bowl of spicy, crunchy masala goodness.







The next day back at the language school, in halting Hindi I told my professor about our visit to Kempty Falls. After a funny look and a snort of contempt, he told me how that particular tourist trap was only for people from Delhi, and that Mussourie-dwellers would never be caught dead there. In the summer, Delhi is a sweaty hell-hole, and a well-known escape from the heat is to Kempty Falls. Jump in your car at 5:00am and by 11 you can be at the Falls. My professor painted a very vivid picture of Delhi-ites, oppressed by the heat of the plains, very nearly loosing their minds in childish joy upon immersion in the frigid pool at the base of the Falls. The good people of Mussourie, however, having access to pleasant weather and cool water year round, feel they have no need to visit such a tourist trap.

Where I am

Landour, my current location, is a high-altitude suburb of Mussourie, a town of a little less than 30,000 people perched in the Himalayan foothills at an elevation of 6,000ft. Dehradun, the state capital of Uttarakhand State, is about 30 km away, although it takes the better part of 2 hours to get there due to the winding roads and precipitous contours of this landscape. The hillsides surrounding Mussourie are heavily forested with mixed pine, rhododendron, and oak forests.

Known as the “Queen of the Hills” to the British Raj, Mussourie was a popular retreat from the summer heat of the plains for the British. During the 19th century, the Mall (the local equivalent of Main Street) reportedly sported signs saying things like “Indians and Dogs Not Allowed”.

Middle class Indians now come to Mussourie in droves during the hot season. The west end of the Mall is popular with honeymooning Indian couples. In contrast, the east end, where Mussourie ends and Landour begins, supports a conspicuously large population of videshi, aka white foreigners, studying Hindi at the Landour Language School.

Mussourie is an affluent place, with much higher literacy rates than the average in India (86% compared to 60% overall). Several important institutions and schools were originally founded to serve the families of British army and government officials, and now cater to Indian students. One notable example is the Woodstock School, a Christian, international residential school founded in the 1850’s. This week the Woodstock School hosted something called the Mountain Writer’s Festival – I mooched in on a couple of poetry readings and musical performances – my primary motivation may or may not have been to get a free cup of tea.

Mussourie is a beautiful, but like most of India, suffers from its own share of environmental ills. The town’s booming popularity as a tourist destination has led to over-development. Garbage collection and water scarcity are also perennial problems. A number of beautiful views around Landour are marred by rivers of garbage statically flowing down ravines.

Monkey menace

Upon my arrival in Mussourie, riding up the hill for the first time in a taxi, I was very excited to see a little brown monkey sitting on a wall on the side of the road. Over the next few days, I saw many more, both the brownish rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta), and the slightly larger grey langur monkey (Semnopithecus dussumieri). Handsome beasts they are, but my initial excitement has given way to some annoyance and trepidation. They are not at all afraid of people or vehicles, and can be quite aggressive if they see food, as I discovered as I made the elementary monkey mistake of walking out of my house with a sandwich in my hand one morning. A few days later, I looked up from my morning chai in time to see a macaque dashing out the front door with a loaf of bread from the kitchen in its hand. Although I give them a wide berth these days, they are endlessly entertaining to watch!

Landour Language School

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It’s been about three weeks since I arrived in Mussourie, in Uttarakhand State. I’ve been studying Hindi at the Landour Language School, an almost-100 year old institution housed in a church and old monastery complex. This is just about the busiest time of the year for the school; about 50-60 students of all different nationalities are to learn Hindi for a whole variety of reasons, from personal interest, to study abroad programs, to professional development. The classes are fairly intense – one-on-one for four, one hour sessions a day. That combined with 3-4 hours of homework and self-study makes for a decently full workday

Life up here in the cloud bank is persistently misty and rainy. September is the tail-end of the monsoon, but locals claim that this year’s monsoon is lasting weeks longer than usual. This week much of Uttarakhand State has been plagued by flooding and landslides. Many locals I've talked to claim that this is the longest and most intense monsoon in recent memory, and have cited climate change. Anecdotal evidence of climate change in action.

From Alaska to India

Locals often claim that Kaktovik is the foggiest place on earth. In the little room that serves as an office for the local airline, some witty fellow has scratched "Barter Island" off the map on the wall and replaced it with "Foggy Island". I believe it. For 5 days the coast was gray and totally socked in, with visibility less than a couple hundred meters; not good conditions to land a small plane on a gravel spit runway. So I fretted in the bunkhouse, getting ever more irritable as my window for reaching India on time narrowed (check out the foggy bunkhouse in the picture). The fog finally cleared on Friday, and when I reached Fairbanks, US Airways told me that if I wanted to get back to Virginia without spending $1400, then I would have to wait until Monday.

So no orientation for me. However I did get to spend an extra couple of days with my parents in Virginia. I finally got to New Delhi on Wednesday night, a full 8 days after my originally scheduled arrival time. After a few days engaged in paperwork and a mini-orientation, I jumped on a plane up to Dehra Dun, the capital of Uttarrakhand state. From there a taxi took me up, up, up into a cloud, to the town of Mussourie, a British-Raj era hill station, where I will be studying Hindi at the Landour Language School for the next three months. After 2 days here, I've concluded that Mussourie is perpetually encased in a cloud. Walking through the busy town center, the blare of horns and chatter of honeymooning couples is muffled by the dense fog hanging between the buildings. Occasionally there's an opening in the white bank, and glorious views down the hillsides are visible. Dense trees cover the slopes, and gray languor monkeys and a whole variety of unidentified birds fill the branches. Rhesus macaques sit on walls along the roads, staring balefully at passersby, hoping to spy some food to snatch. I'll upload some photos as soon as I take some! Classes start tomorrow!