more village photos

ladies in the rice field nursery uprooting the rice to be planted in the fields - this is called transplanting. they thought we were hilarious for some unknown reason!

a local method of moving irrigation water across a gap in the rock.

TOLD you all i would get some geography pictures in somewhere. terraced farming with the fields flooded in preparation for the rice crops.

there is a dam in the picture somewhere. see if you can spot it. when we were told there was a dam in this valley we though concrete monstrosity not the local variation! but still very interesting, especially when the road ended 3 km earlier so how would they get concrete here?

Village visits

one of the less attractive bridges to cross.

sharing the highway with the local traffic

one of the new metal bridges installed after floods destroyed the old wooden ones.

the path to the hills. and an interesting irrigation channel to the right. there are lots of NGO activity in the valley to varying degrees of success.

Hi all,

we are back from our trek to some of the most remote community in the Nawalparasi district of Nepal (thats where we are based...). it was a brilliant but tiring trek up the mountain before conducting community discussions (with translators as our Nepali isnt much cop!). We stayed with some very friendly villagers, and even shared a room on the second night with a chicken laying eggs! the food was interesting... i chewed on a chickens foot before ellie kindly pointed out that there would be no meat found (it was a cooked chicken i didnt just pick up a random passing chicken and start chewing)!. I also had a cockerals head in my lunch with a nice eyeball staring right back at me whilst eating! I think ellie found out some useful information for her research, its difficult to tell until you return to the UK and properly look at what you found out. anyways, enough of the chatter, ill add some photos now!

Day off in Chitwan

monkeys
the three rhinos that we saw on the elephant trek.
side view of the armored tank
a crocodiles bottom. we got off the canoe about 30 feet away. the guide: "dont worry, he is cold blooded so until he gets warm he wil not attack us". everyone else: "how long does it take to get warm?" guide: "i am not sure". worried face's!
us on the canoe. sorry ladies, Dr. Biggs chose the photo's so i may not look my best!

We decided we had earned a day off or two after the first two weeks working so we came to Chitwan national park, its near the Indian border so its bloody hot (too hot for us northern folk who think the sun is the local pub!). we had a very adventurous day on a canoe, then a walk through the forest where the guides pretended that we were near to some sloth bears, which seemed to scare the Israeli woman who was with us as she quickly picked up a stick to defend herself and didnt let it go for the rest of the trip! we didnt see any bengal tigers but we did meet a rhino sleeping in the forest, no pictures im afraid as batteries ran out. but i did get a photo of a tiger footprint on my phone! you will just have to beleive me until april!

in the afternoon we went on an elephant safari into the forest again, there we saw three rhino, two different types of deer, some wild boar and some monkeys. the elephant driver (or mahout if you like) didnt seem impressed with your favourite yorkshire trekker as i managed to spot a great deal more wildlife in the undergrowth than he did! it was a great trip, very peaceful until the Nepali Dom Jolly (spelling?) turned up on the back of another elephant! - i dont know you pay 600 rupees for a safari thats just 30minutes from the internet cafe and some fella's phone rings... he answered the flamin thing as well! so we are not quite as intrepid explorers as we would like to portray, but it was only one day off!

we are back off to the working world today. will not be in touch with the world wide web of knowledge until saturday as we are visiting some more remote villages. subject to my ankle not exploding!

bye for now

ok ok, i misjudged your eagerness to see geography in action so due to popular demand see the photos

an irrigation channel! it means the village are much better off than many!



a typical farming landscape with a mountain in the background. i could tell you what it is called, but i wasnt listening properly to the students at this time! i could ask Dr. Biggs, but it appears her abilities to pronounce nepali names and words is worse than mine!


i get the impression from being reading over peoples shoulders (sorry mum i know i shouldnt do it, but its very tempting!) Dr. Biggs is writing an essay on Nepal so i have kept it short and sweet!

Introduction to the photos

The main purpose of our trip is to meet some masters students who have been funded by the Glacier Trust. The idea is for a knowledge transfer to happen where we give them experience in geographical data collection and analysis and they give us some experience of climate change impacts in a very interesting location. Since most of you reading this aint geography geeks, and probably dont have the same appetite for pictures of terraced farming and the like i will try and keep the descriptions short and the photos plentiful!

Ellie is in Nepal as well...

Hi all (gary's boss here!)

Yes, we are still getting along fine., he doesn't smell that bad yet either! Life is heating up in Nepal - currently in Chitwan National Park (waiting to meeting an NGO again) and it's well over 30 degrees! Went for a walk this morning and saw a massive (2 tonne) rhino dosing in the jungle shade and a couple of crocs sunbathing on the Rapti river banks.

Work is going well with the masters students. We are learning a lot about the environment from them and we're helping them with their research methods and field data collection. This week, after meeting with a NGO to do some field research with them we are hopefully going to concentrate on my field data collection. Life in the Nepali rural communities is even more laid back than in the city - things happen when they happen. We waited 2 hours under a tree the other day for a jeep to arrive. Gary has re-drafted our time plan every day since we've arrived [someone has to make sure things happen - gary - yes ellie i have editing POWERS!!!!!!!]!!
*yes gary likes to make himself feel better by making sure we have an updated plan. while this is very useful it is me that has to make all the phone calls to make things happen, despite him requesting to be communications director!

Campus life is peaceful and we are getting a lot of work done (in our guesthouse.. a late-20th century American-constructed ruin.. ok, it's not that bad - at least we have lots of rooms and the water/electric just about works) even though every other day seems to be a national holiday. Electricity is randomly available. We are now regulars at the only local restaurant where we've exhausted the menu, purely to avoid dal bhat in the uni canteen every evening.

I'm really enjoying seeing lots of different parts of Nepal which is such a diverse country in both culture and landscape. Good job we still have plenty of time left as things here take such a long time happen!!

Gary seems to be writing frantically on the computer next to me so I'll stop waffling on as he'll have more to say...

Gudibari Village visit

the legendary bengal tiger waiting for its lunch.
conducting a group survey in the village. most of the men here are ex Gorkhas for the British or Indian Army. The guy in the stripy t-shirt is M0han one of the masters students, who acted as our interpreter for this method.
our new friends.
introducing the students to GPS. Dr. BIggs in her element...
this is the house of the head villager that kindly let us stay the night while we visited his village. it was very peaceful.