Karl's Chimera

This is the trip report of the 2023 STARLING India trip I guided over the last 2 weeks.

As you can see, this trip was mainly aimed towards seeing and identifying as much plant species as possible:

Now, where to begin… there is so much to tell about India’s wildlife.
First of all, I have never seen a country that divides opinions more than India does. So many people tell you “I WILL NEVER GO THERE” or “I WILL NEVER GO THERE AGAIN”, and are very adamant as to why they think that way. Persons I spoke to consider India a very crowded place, with open sewers and too much garbage everywhere. And when you travel there, most of the journey is being spent on the toilet, creating something that resembles a Jackson Pollock painting.

Now you do see things that feel that way. Just two pics I took with my phone from the car as illustration…

But when you ask me about India, I think about my previous travels into the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau, looking for Snow Leopards. I think about Buddhists being the most friendly people I have ever met. I think about the fact that India has more % vegetarians than any other country in the world, and why that is not a coincidence.
It is the country that houses more bear species and more cats than any other country. It is a country of many faces.

But mainly I think about conservation, and the fact India has truly done some remarkable feats to help bring back certain species from the brink of extinction.

When I was born, there were still more than 30.000 tigers left in the wild. In 2006 there were only 1700. Asiatic lion dropped to just twelve (12!) individuals in the early 1900’s and had their lowest numbers a century before tigers did. Indian Wild Ass dropped to 350 individuals in the mid sixties. We could give many more examples like this, just like in Europe, but what India did differently is what keeps mesmerizing me. They took hard action, and difficult action (sometimes relocating villages and thousands of people), but it had results: There are now more than 4000 tigers, 674 Asiatic lions in GIR National Park and more than 4000 Indian Wild Asses in the Little and Greater Rann of Kutch.

The purpose of this trip was not only to see and photograph these animals, but to try and learn about the Indian way of conservation. First day however we went to check out some historic New Delhi culture sites, in order to acclimatize…

We then visited two area’s: First the Northwestern part of India (Gujarat) with Little Rann of Kutch and GIR as national parks on our list. After that we travelled to Madhya Pradesh province in the center of the country, where some of the big tiger reserves are found. There we visited Satpura NP, Pench NP and Tadoba NP.

Cats are best found in dry seasons, so we opted for the very warm Indian Summer with temperatures regularly going over 40°C. It is not only warm, the light is also very bright and photography can only be properly done early morning and late evening. The picture below is not converted to Black-and-white but shows how hard the light can be at 9 am already. I was warned by many people about this: “forget landscape photography, and the light will not be what you want it to be. But you will love it!”

The trip started with a visit to the salt flats of Little Rann of Kutch. For centuries, people have been flooding the land with fresh water, allowing underground salt deposits to crystallize, dry out, and be harvested. The scenery shows these manually dug out dikes, flamingos attracted to crustaceans thriving in the salty water, and dozens of salt trucks carrying the salt through the desert. A scene none of the group had seen before.

But Little Rann is also home to some typical dry species: Desert fox, caracal, jungle cat, striped hyena and off course the wild donkeys

After this it was time to go to GIR, “only a seven hour drive” we were reassured…

In 100 years GIR 60 X’ed their lion population. In fact, this is the only remaining population of the Asiatic lion. GIR now has around 674 lions, 400 leopards and 200 striped hyena’s so it is a carnivore paradise. Lions are lions and never care about your presence, but the leopards were proving more difficult. Thanks to our good spotters, we found a male observing us from the bushes.

The spotters saw he was thirsty and decided to go to the nearest water hole and wait. And after a while, they were proven right…

Asiatic lions differ from African lions by having fewer manes, thicker tail end and a ventral skin fold on their bellies. They are just as lazy though, of the many dozens of lions I have seen in my life, none of them were running…

A brown barren landscape it was then, but occasionally there was a flash of colour, like this Black-rumped Flameback.

Also very special were the first ghost trees, of which we would see many more.

One night I saw the biggest bat I have ever seen. Turned out there was a roost of Indian Flying fox nearby. Such cool animals to spend time with.

In Gujarat, we also saw the first of three Jungle cats whilst spotlighting. Following, we travelled east towards three tiger parks. The first one, Satpura NP is big and has approx. 50 tigers. So the statistics of seeing tiger here are rather low, but it is a greener park and I wanted the best chance to see sloth bear.

In Satpura we saw higher numbers of Indian bison (better known as Gaur) too.

When you do Safari trips in India, it is much more regulated than in Africa. You get a dedicated jeep, with a dedicated driver and dedicated guide, to drive a chosen route. This means inevitably that some people in our group would see things the others wouldn’t. By doing around 20 Safari in total, I hoped observations would be plentiful for everybody and we would all see the top targets. Two big sightings were done by only one jeep: A rusty spotted cat in Satpura and the famous Blacky, the black leopard from Tadoba. I missed both.

Satpura was also on the to do list because it is the best place to find Indian Giant Squirrel, one of the largest squirrels in the world.
At first we only saw their silhouettes racing through the treetops, but afterwards we found an animal at a nest site.

It took us a couple of days, but then we also finally found sloth bear families.

Then things started getting serious as we arrived in Pench NP. Pench has more tiger sightings and off course tiger was the main target species so all was now directed towards seeing the big cat.

All throughout the trip we had many sightings of grey langur primates. Most mothers were carrying infants.

Lots of owls were seen:

After half of our stay in Pench, nobody had seen a tiger, so a healthy dose of stress was starting to creep up on us. Local people kept saying “no worries. you will see them”, but some people in the group thought it was about time the guides found them a tiger. No pressure…

So how do you find a tiger?

You find the tiger by listening to deer and monkeys their alarm calls. There are basically two big cats in the forest: leopard and tiger. Leopards are scared of tigers and move through the undergrowth with speed, implying alarm calls are short and quickly stop as the cat moves out of sight. Tigers run the show, and walk much slower, therefore alarms last much longer. Our spotters were 110% sure whether alarm calls came from tiger or leopard activity.

At some point a guide shouted and pointed to the trees. Hans saw a rather nice pattern in between two trees and pointed it out for me. For me the sighting of the trip followed:

The same evening, we heard some very nearby monkeys alarming, and then it became quiet. Our guide proposed to wait and see what happens. Ten minutes later he exploded and whistled -or better shouted- THERE! Tiger hunting!!!
It took me a few more minutes to find it, but there she was, stalking.

In the following days everybody saw tigers but it was only at Tadoba national park, where the sightings increased. Tadoba, Corbett and Bandhavgarh are currently seen as the three top tiger parks.

In Tadoba five years ago a woman tried taking a selfie with a tiger and fell from the jeep. Another jeep driver quickly blocked her off from the tiger but the park decided to ban smartphone use. So outside of the park you now have people renting out digital camera’s to take a picture of your tiger sighting.

Something else I noticed outside the park, were these graves. Graves of people, killed by tigers.

Also we noticed a guide saying that some tigers are not approached, because they have killed people already. I asked him where the limit was? And he indicated that when a tiger kills 5-10 people, he has to retire in a zoo. When they kill even more, the tiger can get shot.

I couldn’t believe that so many people want to extirpate our local wolves in Europe, because they have killed a couple of sheep.

In india Tigers kill between 100-200 people a year, whilst leopards are responsible for around 600 fatalities.

In Tadoba, there have been years with 40 people killed by tigers, when they go and collect firewood from the forest. I was astounded to hear people still want the tiger and tiger ecotourism in their surroundings. Respect to them.

A queen resting in the bamboo forest:

Whenever a tiger is found, people gather. In the following image you see more than 100 people looking at the same tiger. The tiger, strangely, does not care at all. Only 15% of these parks is open to safari tourism, and the carnivores are often more abundant in the tourist zone than in the quiet park zone.

On the last tiger drive we found a mother with four subadult cubs. She must be a formidable hunter to feed five mouths…

And this sighting concluded the trip. We saw wild nature, well managed parks, more than 30 tigers and 25 lions, sloth bears, unique smaller mammals and around 170 bird species. But above all we met the friendliest people on the planet, who might have less than we do, but seem to be happier. Next time Kaziranga?

I want to thank a few people:

First of all our local guide Gajendra: you were amazing. Thanks also to Iqbal and Mr. Mohit himself for all the local help by Asian adventures.

Thanks to Billy for managing everything on our side: STARLING delivered a very solid trip!
Thanks to the group of ten fantastic participants who wanted to skip sleep to find mammals. What more could I ask for? Lots of hardcore photographers also, we learned a lot from each other.

In respect of my friend Jean Marie, I wrote this in French.

Essayez d’être ce que vous manquez à ceux qui sont décédés…

En 2011, j’étais en vacances en Norvège quand j’ai rencontré le Français le plus sympathique: Jean Marie.

Le Varanger.

Après une journée de photographie ensemble, nous avons été invités chez lui en Lorraine.

“Venez voir les chats sauvages. Vous ne le regretterez pas.”
Alors on a fait. Un week-end avec Jean Marie. Le premier week-end de tant de week-ends qui sont encore venus. Printemps, été, automne, hiver … nous y allions souvent.

Je n’ai jamais rencontré un homme avec autant de chaleur, d’altruisme et de générosité.
Il avait une maison ou tout le monde était toujours le bienvenu. Il allait vérifier nos pièges photo, demandait comment allait le bébé, puis l’a pris sur son bras tout le weekend après.

Jean Marie est décédé hier, figure paternelle pour moi et Pieter-Jan. Un bon ami pour tant de gens.
Dormez bien, tu nous manqueras.

En hommage, voici quelques photos que nous avons prises ensemble dans ta chère lorraine. Des souvenirs qui resteront toute une vie…

 

 

 

A few weeks ago, Starling reizen organised its first trip dedicated to seeing both Pallas’s cat, Saiga antelope and Snow Leopard in the wild. More specifically, the wild Mongolian steppes and Altai mountain ranges. Safe to say we -consisting of Billy, Rik, Sam, Iwan, PJ and myself- were very eager to join this maiden trip. Even if we did not know what to expect, except for a dry and chilly landscape and a lot of sheep meat on our plate.

Mongolia…really is a very quirky country:

It is one of the oldest countries on the planet, being established around 209 BC.
Three million people inhabit the 604.000 square miles, half of those inhabiting the capital Ulaanbaatar, making it the most sparsely populated country in the world.
The average elevation is 1580m, sunny days are observed around 257 days a year, and the average year round temperature measured in Ulaanbaatar is -1°C, making it the coldest capital in the world.

Our trip started with many hours of flights, before landing in Ulaanbaatar:

Cold but Gold, the vast city of Ulaanbaatar is a sight to behold.
I guess people were not expecting the city to grow that big when the coal power plant was placed.

Originally known as Orgöo, Ulaanbaatar historically moved no less than 25 times before finally settling at its current riverside location. What else would you expect when your population consists of nomadic herders, right.

Mongolia is most known for Genghis Khan and the Mongol empire he founded in 1206. Having reunited all of the tribes and motivating them to work and fight together, the Mongol empire was the largest empire that ever existed. Safe to say in Mongolia, Genghis is considered the true OG.

People visiting the Genghis Khan statue outside Ulaanbaatar.

Enough with the human stuff. Time for nature

In Ulaanbaatar, you are greeted by Azure tits. High on the wish list and a lifer for all tour participants.

Time to hit the road.

In the first week, we drove around 700km to a remote steppe area in the Southwest of the country and a hotspot for Pallas’s cat.

The wide open Mongolian steppe landscape, littered with cattle belonging to nomadic herders.

About 25% of Mongolians still live a traditional nomadic life, but life is changing fast and about 68000 herders a year have moved to Ulaanbaatar since 2001, setting up informal tent camps in the capital, but lacking facilities like water and power. The population of Ulaanbaatar has almost doubled in the last 10 years to 1.5 million people, with about 55 percent of the city’s population still living in ger tents.

A remarkable fact is that under the Soviet union, the country (four times the size of Germany) was not allowed to surpass 20 million livestock animals, whilst currently it is estimated that 70 million animals graze the steppes, causing depletion in some areas.
More animals means more animals at risk: Severe winters that kill large numbers of livestock are common enough in Mongolia that there is a term for the phenomenon: dzud. Dzud has been occurring more frequently in recent years, and it seems to be getting worse. Every decade has one or two winters with significant losses (up to 30% of all cattle dying!) but in previous years they have been occurring more frequent and more harsh. The winter of 2010 had temperatures dropping to -59°C, ending in massive death of livestock. The enticement of a better city life, combined with the harsh conditions in winter, made so many people switch their life around and move to the concrete jungle. Impressive to see this transition taking place.

Herd of cattle making its way through the infinite landscape

Bogii vs Oogii… Whenever there is free time, Mongols pick a fight. Easy as that.

And now… Pallas’s cat
These rarely seen felids inhabit the vast steppe landscape and are notoriously shy, so the way one goes around to see this species is by scanning from distance. Once you have found a cat, you can approach it. The animals rarely have a shelter (such as a marmot hole or rocky burrow) to run to and simply crouch down.

Early morning chilly scan session

PJ got respect from the locals, yet they didn’t know his hat was made from a roadkill fox #ecofur

Daytime was spent birdwatching and in photo hides to get close shots.

PJ being a happy camper whilst waiting for Mongolian larks to come and drink.

Shore lark

 

Upland buzzard

Mongolian gerbil liked being in the shot.

“Tony Tony, Listen. Why do squirrels swim on their back?”
“Don’t know George”
“To keep their nuts from getting wet”

Migratory red flanked bluetail had left Siberia and was now on its way south. Strange to see a boreal taiga species in the steppe landscape.

Steppe eagle at dawn

Not only living animals but also dead animals are seen everywhere in Mongolia. In tough winters, easily 20% of sheep, goats, horses, yaks and camels can die. A result is that many of these carcasses are eaten only by flies and small critters. The flat planes are not ideal for vultures since there is no place to rest, so no large groups of scavengers are present in many areas.
What remains of the dead animal is remarkably intact:

Because there is so much dust in the air, both sunrises and sunsets are bound to be impressive. Billy and PJ loved putting their skills to work and get the shot as good as they could.
I was never that much into it, but gave it a try. In the end it were the other images with human interaction in this moment that I liked most.

It is said no woman can get between a man and his tripod

More looking for Pallas’s cat

After a few days we got lucky… Billy, -probably due to the fact he had a double vision Swarovski telescope and not because of superior spotting skills- found a Pallas’s cat foraging in the steppe and the biologist that joined us was eager to get to the cat ASAP. He said that most likely it would be laying down in the grass, relying on its camouflage. It was a matter of getting there and finding it.

We jumped in the car, drove to the spot and got out. Complete silence around us. No wind, no bird songs, nothing. A very strange atmosphere.

All of a sudden I was yelled at by Oogii: “Don’t move, it’s right in front of you”. I did not move a meter but still could not see it. Felt like a dummy and it was only when the guide came to me and pointed it out, that I saw the cat laying in the grass, some 8m in front of me.

Pallas’s cat crouched down and not moving a muscle.

The best thing one can do next is place hides and make sure no more people are in sight of the cat. After some time the animal will very slowly get up and sneak away.
So that’s what we did.

First it opened its eyes

And then indeed, it very very slowly sneaked away. In a way I have never ever seen any animal behave. Complete slow motion, yet in plane sight. SO EPIC!!!

Stuff off dreams to see such a rare animal in such a way

A Mega

With this great sighting it was time to leave the steppes behind and head for the Altai mountains.
We took a plane and flew 2.5 hours west, being reminded that Mongolia is a big country indeed.

Our guide had arranged drivers, Land Cruisers and four ger tents for us to spend the following week in. A true expedition because hardly anyone inhabits this place.

Insane -unphotoshopped- scenery at dusk. The dust in the air makes for very special lighting.

In these Altai regions, steppe habitat is found at the bottom of the mountains, and it harbours the last populations of Saiga Antelope in Mongolia. We spent some days scanning for snow leopards in the higher parts of the mountains, and others for Saiga in the steppe areas.

Locals were wondered by the DJI Mavics that PJ and Billy brought. Looks good for the aftermovie PJ is planning to make.

 

 

The rough life. Herders spend winter with their family in a lonesome ger high up in the mountains,
trying to provide an income for their families as well as food for their cattle.

We gained a lot of respect for these people, who give it all they’ve got, every single day.

 

Rik and Sam on scanning duty, two brothers that travel together in their quest to see pristine nature and wildlife.

Early morning shades in base camp

Our guides had arranged two herders to spend a week with us and ride their horses up the mountains every day, in order to look for fresh snow leopard activity.
If they were to find fresh tracks, or even a kill, we would know a more specific area to focus on.

Crazy evening vibes

Tree sparrow very common everywhere

Weasel prints on a river bank

We spent quite some time looking for Saiga antelope. It is a species that few people are interested in, but I have always dreamt about seeing them. With their nose trunks, their insane running speeds (exceeding 100 km/h) and their ability to survive in the coldest and driest of steppe habitat.

Saiga artist impression by (c) Meser creations.
The nose is flexible and inflatable so helps the animal to breathe clean air during dusty summers and warm air during cold winters.

Populations of the critically endangered Mongolian Saiga antelope have plummeted by 40 percent following large die-offs due to harsh winters and viral infections (such as Peste des Petits Ruminants (PPR), also known as ovine rinderpest or goat plague). It is now estimated that only 3000 Saiga remain in Mongolia. The Saiga population has suffered a roller coaster ride since 2001 when the numbers dropped to only 750 animals following a summer drought and a heavy winter. However, thanks to continuous conservation efforts, the population increased to 14000 and its range increased by 13 percent in 2014. But then an outbreak of goat plague reduced the numbers to 5000 in 2017. Poaching has also reduced the Saiga population.

Because these animals are so shy and we did not want to chase them through the steppes, we settled on portraying the enigmatic Saiga in its steppe habitat:

Saiga in the steppe

PJ -aka the bone collector- went out to find some Mongolian Ibex trophies and will spend the following year filling in Mongolian paperwork to get these bad boys to his living room.

On our quest for the snow leopard, we found more prey remains…

 

Where there are healthy numbers of snow leopards, bones pile up.

Our drivers knew these mountains very well and were keen to show us the good stuff.

Can you image the feeling when grandpa camouflage here looks through his magnifying glass and points you out were the ibex are sitting, and you hadn’t seen them with your swaro telescope?
Indeed, it goes like Kendrick said: Bitch be humble.

 

Wherever there are bones, you see Lammergeiers…

The first days passed and no leopard yet. But tracks were everywhere and the weather was good. So we were hopeful. And Billy kept teasing us that he would find the leopard before we could, thanks to his brand new thermal imaging camera.

 

Another sunset after a solid day of scanning the slopes with the entire group. No cat.

The following day we were up early again and climbed the mountain to a clear vantage point where we could scan. After a few hours Billy -still probably due to the fact he had a double vision Swarovski telescope and not because of superior spotting skills?- said super calmly “looks like there is a dead animal lying there, left of the big rock”

This is the view I more or less had in my scope.

Yup, looks like an animal laying there in a rather unnatural position.

He continued still calmly as ever “That must be a fresh leopard kill no?
I said “I don’t know man, I can barely say what that is”.

Then his decibels cranked up to 11 and he yelled “there is a fucking snow leopard laying left to the big rock”

This image was taken from around 2-3km distance, and if it wouldn’t have been for the dead yak, the leopard (left of the rock) would have remained unseen, for sure.

This is where things became really really interesting. And this moment changed the agenda for the following days completely.

Oogii told us that if we were to climb the mountain slope very quietly, we would have a good chance of sneaking up onto the leopard, with possibility of a close observation.
We all got nervous… went down the valley, had a quick lunch, dressed light and all of us took just the big lens on our back. No more words were said. The steep hike began.

Heart rate 180, climbing a ridge that you know has a snow leopard laying on it, and hoping for the animal to not hear us… was a special cocktail of emotions.
And sure enough, when we peaked around the corner, we saw the dead yak and the yak’s mother… casually standing next to a sleeping snow leopard.

Uncropped image of a sleeping snow leopard. (Really sorry for the heat vibrations causing the image to be less sharp than expected)

We were baffled by the fact that the mother yak had no fear what so ever and even chased after the leopard when it ran away.

 

Fearless mother Yak keeping guard of her dead calf.
Meat is murder, that also goes in snow leopard land.

The following two days Pj, Billy and myself each sat in our hides, waiting for the leopard to show up on the kill site. He came every night but was reluctant to appear in front of our hides during daytimes. So all those many hours (getting in the hide at 5 am, getting out at 6pm) to do little more than gaping through my viewfinder, warming my hands on the (mutual!) pee bottle and hearing PJ say he was not cold at all whilst hearing Billy chatter his teeth in the tent next door.

So as a last try we did once more what we tried on the first day, sneaking up on the leopard. And this time the air was not vibrating, the cat was there and we took many images:

Huge relief to see this in your viewfinder after a few gnarly days. Big male snow leopard, high up in the Altai mountains!

That image concludes our trip.

And what a special trip it was.

Big thanks to Billy and Starling reizen in general to organize this trip.
Also big thanks to our guides Bogii and Oogii. Privilege working with you.
Big thanks to Eli for letting me do this.

People smiling.