12:18pm: Draco the flying lizard
The photograph I posted yesterday was the Draco, The Flying Lizard. Click here to see the lizard marked out in the bark.



These small lizards live in trees and are found along the Western Ghats. They are masters of Camouflage and if they are sitting on a bark without moving, its almost impossible to find them. On land they are clumsy and easy victims for predators. When scared, they run up a tree. When threatened, they leap off the tree. With their "wings" stretched out, these long-tailed, lightly built lizards glide gracefully. The wings act like parachutes. They gently land on another tree, head up. When they land, they run up the tree, getting ready for their next flight.

During mating season, male flying lizards defend their territories. They court females by displaying their bright yellow throat flap as shown in the photograph above. They have to, as they are well camouflaged otherwise.

5:56pm: Spot the Lizard


There really is a lizard sitting on this bark

Answer : You can compare the original with this one to find the lizard. Try to find it yourself before you look into this link though.

12:22pm: Leopard Updates
A lot has happened in Valparai since I last posted about the captured leopard. We did a bunch of press releases in the local news papers and it seems to have been well received except for the fact that the article appeared on a day when another leopard picked up a small girl in a tea estate and killed that girl.

People of course were angry which prompted the forest department to deploy traps in and around the area where the girl was killed. Last week, a young leopard was captured around that area. Anand, the NCF biologist who deals with conflict situations in this area, thinks its just a year and a half old and too small to kill a young girl. Either way it has been branded as a man-eater and since people felt that its not safe to release it back in the wild again, the Forest Department have moved it to the Madras zoo. Soon everyone realised that this was a young leopard and could not have been the same one that killed the girl. So now the forest department is under pressure to deploy some more traps to capture the mother of this young leopard or any other individual which people think is the actual leopard that killed the girl.

I really don't think there is a better solution than taking these animals to captivity. However its very tough to find the right one which actually killed the girl and in the process of finding the right one, many leopards are getting caught. In relatively prey-rich areas like this, it may not be too wrong to judge these incidents as accident and not necessarily a birth of a "man-eating" leopard. We should be able to identify individuals using forensics, size and rosette patterns, and/or by implanting transponders on captures and relocated individual leopards.

Now NCF is planning to organise bigger awareness programs and seminars with the local forest dept, local people, press and even politicians in the dist to help them handle these kind of situations better the next time around.

1:56pm: Digital Photography Workshop
For a long time a lot of people have been wanting me to do this, so here it is. I am organising a 2-day Digital photography workshop here in Bangalore and the first batch is on the 2nd week of May. Check for more details here.

If you are wanting to get into photography or have just started using a DSLR, then this is a perfect course for you. It's also scheduled on a weekend so you do not have to miss your day job.

3:12pm: The Shock


Doing a press release here in Valparai with the images to tell people the leopard's side of the story.

8:16pm: A Day with a Leopard
I'm currently in Valparai, Tamil Nadu doing some work with the Nature Conservation Foundation folks. Lot of events this week, which I shall write about later.

Few weeks ago, an old lady was injured from what was reported as an attack by a leopard in this town. There was no conclusive evidence, but the forest department was pressurized to setup Leopard traps outside the town to catch this Leopard. Valparai is surrounded by Tea estates and forest fragments and leopard sightings are quite common.

Anyway this morning we got a call that a leopard was caught in one of the traps.



( Read more... )

Today was one of those days when I had to put down my camera and help the situation than try to document it. Felt like went though a war zone and survived.

Update : The leopard did make it alive it seems. Hope it manages in the wild at Top Slip.

11:41am: Back Online
After living off borrowed laptops and desktops for a month, I'm finally back online. I've given my Thinkpad for servicing at a nearby computer place who said he would be able to fix it for Rs 10k, but I'm still waiting on it.

Meanwhile, I decided to switch and moved to Mac. Its been exactly a decade since I switched from Win 98 to Linux and now moving to Mac has been quite an interesting transition. I just managed to get all the things running in the mac and since I do a lot of photo editing, I think I'm really loving it.

Been traveling a lot the last few weeks and now happy to be back in town for a bit. Hope to catch up on my 6 months work of photo backlog.

10:46pm: Bye bye Thinkpad
I had made a quick trip up to North Karnataka for few days last week. On the 1st day of the trip, my laptop (Thinkpad T41p) screen flickered for a bit and after that just refused to boot up. I got back and gave it to the IBM service center for repair and have been keeping my fingers crossed as I just ran out of the 3 year warranty period.

Today they get back to me and say the motherboard is busted and they will charge me Rs 50,000 ($1200) for replacing it. Thats right, almost the cost of a new decent laptop. So much for being such a long Thinkpad fan.

Anyway I've asked some folks to check it up outside for me and to see if they can do anything about it. If not, its time for a new laptop. This is going to put a serious hole in my pocket.

1:41pm: Over and Out
Finally its documentary over (Atleast the filming bit). The edit is scheduled in April and hopefully the documentary will air sometime towards the end of the year.

The final shoot was quite tough. Had to walk up and down Eravikulam National park with all the heavy gear on my back. Sometimes I ended up walking more than 35 KM a day. The night temperates touched sub zero (Never imagined I would experience -6 C in south india) and the days were hot and sweaty.



Also finally managed to climb up Anai Mudi, the tallest peak south of Himalayas. The view from the top is breathtaking. On one side you can have the birds eye view of the whole Eravikulam National park and parts of Valparai in Tamil nadu and on the other side, the jaded peaks of Western ghats.

More photos coming soon ...

1:13pm: Heading out now on my final filming schedule for the Western Ghats documentary. Our last shoot is at Eravikulam again and we are all back at the end of the month. Its going to be freaking cold up there at this time of the year.

I've still not had time to process all my Namdapha trip photos. Promise to post them all as soon as I get back.

12:42pm: Yappy new year
Happy New Year Folks

I spent the new years Scuba diving near Goa and it ROCKED.

What did you do ?

9:03am: Yuthi the Superman


Yuthi is one of the young chaps from the Lisu tribe who was with us on our trip at Namdapha. He was helping us carry our luggage as we crossed the National park in over 10 days. The other Lisu men used to call him 'Superman' because he was the strongest one of the lot. He was also the happiest of the lot because on Dec 14th (today) was his wedding and he was really excited about that.

On the 4th day of our trip he fell ill and we decided to let him rest at the '52 mile' settlement where his cousin has a house and we moved on. Yuthi passed away last week because of Malaria. Infact 12 people died in the 52 mile settlement (which has 16 families) last year.

And here were we wimps trying to talk wildlife conservation to them.

12:41am: See you on the other side
OK, so I'm all set to go on the largest adventure/expedition of my life. Got all my medications, all my gear packed up and hopefully my camera will last till the end of the trip. If time permits, hope to swing via Kaziranga on the way out.

See ya all in 3 weeks time.

10:22am: Got Battery ?
The expedition is 2 weeks long and I do not have access to any source of electricity along the way. I tried the AA battery pack for my D200 and D70, but they hardly last. I tried bunch of solar options, but either the gear is too heavy or not powerful enough to charge these batteries. So I need to pack up as much juice for my camera as possible.

If any of you have a spare Nikon D200/D80/D70/D50 battery, I'd really appreciate it if you can let me borrow it for 3 weeks.

2:09am: Updates
I guess I went through a writers block the last month or so. I thought I'd mention this before I disappear this weekend.

I'm heading out on a 3 week vacation to Namdapha tiger reserve in Arunachal Pradesh. Namdapha has been my dream for many years and after months of planning, the trip is finally happening. Namdapha is the only place in the world which supports 4 big cat species - Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard and the Clouded Leopard. Also on the trip are some of the amazing scientists from NCF.

The plan is to start from Miao and trek the next 12 days to a small village named Gandhigram. Gandigram is called the 'last village in India' and is cut-off from rest of the world with thick forests all around. Neither India nor Burma claim this town and hence the tribals in this village are left by themselves. Most of them hunt wild animals and have been hunting extensively in this National park.

The one way trek is about 120 KM long and mostly I'll have to walk all the way back, which will make the whole thing a 240 KM walk. If time permits, we might swing by Kaziranga on the way back. Will keep a detailed log of the trip and hopefully will post it all as soon as I get back.

In other news, I finally managed to update my photo gallery and put some new photographs up.

9:56am: I'm still alive
Well, yeah I've been either traveling or have been having writers block. Our monsoon shoot has finally come to an end and will be in Bangalore for a month or so with small travels here and there.

This is the time to catch up on urban life, fix strained relationships and striking things off the todo list etc.

7:54pm: Goats, goats and goats
Sometime early last week, the Nilgiri tahr that we were hoping to film came down from the highlands. However the next day, a pack of wild dogs came and attacked the herd and all of them ran back up the hills. We were on our way when this happened, so when this happened, we just drove back to Bangalore.

They have come down again it seems and mostly this will be our last chance to film them. Sandesh and Mandanna are already there and I'm leaving tomorrow morning to join them. I would have never guessed, goats would rule my life so much and I just realised that my star sign is Capricorn.

With tomorrows trip, my scorpio would have done close to 3000 KM in the last 10 days.

9:32am: Shivaji - The Boss
Fuel to drive to Tamil Nadu : Rs 1400
Movie tickets : Rs 40
Watching 'Shivaji - the Boss' in a B-grade theater in coimbatore : Priceless

What sucked was the fact that most people in the theater were family types and me and my friend prashanth were the only ones whistling and clapping for every one of Rajini's killer dialogs. The movie itself was very racist and has been done with a poor taste. But then again its a Rajini movie and the dialogs totally rocked.

"Panni kuttama varum, Singam single aa than varum"

11:36am: Leopard finally at BR hills



Leopard from BR Hills (click on image for bigger version)


After more than a year, I finally had an excellent sighting of a leopard and that too at my home forest of BR hills. We got there on saturday evening and got to see one for 20 min right outside the park. On sunday morning, we got a glimpse of this fellow on a tree on the morning safari. A very fruitful trip to BR hills.

11:55pm: foss.in/2007
It's that time of the year. Really the only sensible tech event in this part of the world to look forward to.

7:16pm: Lots of Clouds, but no Goats
As Sandesh puts it, We are in the land of the cloud goats. Lots of clouds but no goats.

We really did not get the huge groups that we were hoping to get. We did manage to get a small group and the males were getting excited smelling the females urine, but that's about it. Sometime now they gather in huge groups and then the fights break out between the males etc. We suspect we are early for this event (maybe because of delayed monsoons).

Anyway we decided to move on and landed back in Valparai now. We have messengers there in Munnar, who will call us the min these huge groups gather. Let's see what Valparai holds in the next few days.

Also I finally have a decent set of Rain coat, rain pants and rain boots. So I can almost stay out in the field in heavy rain all day and not get wet or get bothered by leeches. :)

3:27pm: Disconnected in Munnar
Airtel for some reason is down in Munnar now and I had to fight with a cyber cafe guy for an hour to let me use the computer without an ID proof. He finally gave up the fight when I said he can read all the emails I'm sending out.

Anyway will be offline the next 10 days and hopefully should come back with some handsome Nilgiri tahr photographs and footage.

9:33am: I'm still alive
The last few days have been crazy. Though I've been in town, had to take care of too many things that were on my plate. Looks like we are heading back this weekend to Munnar/Eravikulam to film the Nilgiri tahr.

I really miss still photography. When you are out with a filming team, there is no place for still photography as you are busy either filming or assisting the person who is filming and the last thing you want is a still camera distracting the whole production team. I barely shot less than 4 GB worth of images in the last 2 months (usually my burn rate is 2 GB/day when I'm out doing just still photography). I need to go back to some of these places in western ghats just with my still camera to have more fun.

In other news, I've really started to enjoy Facebook. Finally a clean and decent social networking site.

10:48pm: SiCKO
SiCKO is probably the best documentary film I've ever seen. Michael Moore has managed to do a much better job than Fahrenheit 9/11 (which was mostly Bush bashing). Go download the movie from your favorite torrent site.

1:34pm: Back and dry
Sorry about not updating for such a long time. I got back from Valparai last sunday and been trying to catchup with a months worth of backlog. I've almost taken leave and on vacation in Bangalore now.

The last trip was quite tough. Since we had gone back to film mostly frogs and rain etc, it meant filming in slushy conditions. We went back in search of the Purple frog again, but even after 10 days of searching we could not find it again. I guess they really go come out and go back into the ground in less than a week.

Filming other frogs was really hard work. We would shoot misc stuff all day, have dinner and then head into stream sides in the middle of the evergreen forests. That's when we actually started to work. We find frogs, setup all the gear in the slush and then film them. We were returning back at 3 - 4am many times, fully wet and infested with leeches. Anyway it finally feels good to be back in dry cloths.

Our next destination will be Eravikulam. We wont be going back to the hut, but this is the time when the Nilgiri tahrs rut (males fight it out for the females).