Last day in the camp

We have built the winter camp, it looks pretty nice. Though it is a much smaller ger than the one I live in now and it is very isolated. MIdji and Oyuna will stay in the base camp so it will be bit lonely at times I guess. Or maybe not. There is a family living in the beginning of the big valley (called South Valley) that our trap line likely will run along and it seems as if there 15-16 years old daughter fancies me. Great. Really great.

We have stopped a couple of times when we have driven by and at one time Nadia told them that I liked the camels, so the next day the daughter had saddled one of the camels and was standing by it waiting. I didn’t understand that she was hoping that we should go riding until later. As I came down a mountain two days ago I saw her driving a motorbike towards our camp, since I was alone and my Mongolian isn’t much to brag about I sat down and had a cup of tea until she came back from our camp. I have no idea what she has in mind but I can’t speak to her and find the whole thing quite awkward. Oyuna on the other hand finds it hysterically funny.

 It’s a whole lot easier when they get afraid of me and run away…

 I checked seven of our trap cameras yesterday to make sure that there wasn’t any vegetation blowing in front of them and that all of them are aimed correct. Three of them had been out for five days, three for three days and one for one day, all in all 27 “camera-days (number of cameras times number of days) and we had five visits of snow leopards!!

 We photographed Aztai once, Bummer (the cat who walked around our funneling rocks and likely stepped in two snares without getting caught) three times. The last camera was aimed wrong and we can’t identify the leopard.

Oh, Nadia collected a camera from Mt Chris and we had pictures of Inquisitive on that, at least we think that its him/her. The cat was photographed in daylight and I wasn’t counting on this when I put it out so the camera was positioned wrong in relation to the sun, making the pictures a little over-exposed. Mt. Chris is not far from our trap line so Inquisitive might just pop by one day.

 I am very eager to start building traps but tomorrow we are leaving camp. The cats are likely around when I come back. I hope.

 It feels weird to go home. I have eaten canned food or dried sheep and goat for a long time now. Nadia says that when we get to UB I will notice how much I smell of smoke, she is probably right. Besides I haven’t showered in maybe 50 days, just washed up in the basin.

 It will be so nice to get back to civilization but still, I will miss this place. The camp is my home now and even if it is basic I have grown fond of it. I will be back in January and likely stay here for seven months. It will be a lot harder to take care of everything by myself (no cook or caretaker) but I’m here to catch leopards, the more the better. This has been a good “warm-up”, soon the real work will begin.

 At eight o’clock we will head for UB, hopefully we will be there within 40 hours.

The nomad life

We have scouted the area and decided where to put the ten trap cameras. We started deploying them today, it takes a little while because we have to choose the site carefully so there is no vegetation that moves in the wind. Since the cameras are triggered by motions we would have tons of pictures of moving grass after two months. Besides, since it’s getting colder the batteries will likely not last long if the camera gets constantly activated. It’s a fine line between taking away the necessary vegetation and creating a “clear-cut” that might scare the leopards away.

 Tomorrow we will move the kitchen ger to a nice camp site in the middle of the new trap line. Our original plan was to hire some camels and move the equipment by camel-caravan but apparently the camels can’t carry the floor. We visited the man who owns the camels that are roaming around in camp, out of a coincidence he owns a truck that we could hire instead. Well, I still have to move firewood later when I come back so I will try to arrange a camel caravan then. Yesterday we decided to catch a camel to try and ride it. I filmed the “operation” and Oyuna and Nadia tried to catch one. It didn’t work very well and I must admit that I didn’t pay enough attention to the camels and didn’t notice that I ended up behind one. I got a real action-sequence when the #$^^&*& camel kicked me. I think that he aimed for my knee but he hit my thigh instead. Well, that leg hurt before too and there isn’t much difference in my ability to move. Which isn’t too bad, it’s just downhill that is a little troublesome.

The camels have been roaming free during the summer and it takes a while before they get used to people again. As with everything else, there are also kind and not-so-kind camels.

 Midji went to Gurvantes yesterday and this morning we asked Oyuna when he will come back. Today she replied. “Ok, ok but if he doesn’t come back today, when is the latest that he might come back”? He will come back today she replied, she was 100 % sure. It’s almost ten in the evening, all you who thinks that Midji is back please raise a hand… It isn’t easy to plan things with these nomads. We would need Midji tomorrow morning because we must take the ger down, load it on the truck, drive it to the new place and put it up again. If we ask tomorrow Oyuna will just reply the same, she is absolutely sure that he will be back during the day; I am not sure what that means really. Maybe that he isn’t further away then that he is able to come back. Or it means that he will be “back before it’s time to cut the wool from the sheep”. Or it means nothing at all.

 The man who gave me a ride back to camp when the motorbike broke down came to camp with his wife and kid three days ago. He claimed that he had a snow leopard sitting in his corral. The leopard had killed two goats and refused to leave the area. They had seen it for two days now. Last time he was in camp, when he gave me a ride home, I had shown him pictures from the captures so he should know what the collars looks like but to be sure Nadia asked him really thoroughly. The man was absolutely sure that it was an un-collared leopard. The family was so scared that they couldn’t sleep, they had already moved all their goats and sheep and were not going back to their ger as long as the leopard was around. He explained where the ger was, they had just moved to their winter camp so it wasn’t the same place as last time we met. We didn’t have any collared leopards in the area so we decided that we could go there, put some traps around the dead goats and if we caught the leopard, collar it.

 No, obviously I shouldn’t have trusted this guys navigation abilities, neither should I have been surprised when we ended up in the area that both our collared cats were in. Or that it was one of our cats that was sitting near the corral (we heard his VHF-signal), despite all the assurances that the leopard didn’t have a collar. The family was really disappointed when we told them that we can’t trap the leopard and to help a little we promised to tell them when he leaves the area and that if he isn’t gone by Saturday (in five days)  I will sneak in close and scare him away. You might think that I am not able to scare leopards but I am convinced that I am…

 …The first time I met this family I came over a hill and on the other side was their ger, since I practically put the bike on their doorstep I stopped when the wife came out. As I took of my sunglasses and hood she disappeared and her husband came out a little later, we exchanged some words and after that I drove off. Now, on the way to their ger, Nadia told me in the car that when the wife saw my face she got so scared that she ran away and hid herself…

 We visited a family yesterday and that wife was also scared of me, she didn’t dare to look at me. These people have never seen a Westerner before, I hope that is the reason that they run and hide. I mean, sure I’m not a model but I didn’t think that I was that ugly. I wonder if that is what the herders say about me: “yup, that snow leopard guy is so goddamn ugly that my Mrs ran away when she saw him”. Everyone in the vicinity, including Gurvantes, knows who I am and Nadia told me that they probably knows most things about what I like to eat, wear and so on to. Feels a bit weird but I understand them, if there was a Mongolian living in the forests at Grimso, doing weird stuff and acting strange I would be curious about him too.

 We had three Czechs visiting camp yesterday; they were travelling the country for a month to see the mountains. I think that all of them were mountain guides. We told them about the study and showed pictures and equipment, nice to chat with some people but afterwards it occurred to me that it wouldn’t be good if the tourist guides (they had a guide with them) “put our camp on their map”, we might get a lot of visitor in that case… Funny thing was that the Czechs wanted a picture with me; it’s the second time in a couple of weeks that some one wants to pose with me, feels very strange. When I think of it I understand that most people view this as pretty hardcore but after a while it becomes everyday life and we don’t really think about it as anything special.

 The wife also told Nadia that when her husband gave me a ride home she had told him to hurry because there was wolves in the vicinity of their ger, that was why he drove so fast. Makes sense, but I don’t understand why he stayed in our camp for like one and a half hour in that case… But I didn’t ask.

Tomorrow, I will try the nomad life. We will have some busy days deploying cameras and building the new camp…

The foul smell of failure

Well, this feels like I reckon that all of you can imagine; I have to go home for a while…

My knees aren’t holding up. I slipped, twisted the right knee and fell a little a couple of weeks ago. It’s the same knee that was pinched between a big American truck and an almost equally big snow mobile trailer a year ago (long story, and it’s not funny so I will not tell it). To save the knee I used the other leg as much as possible and probably exhausted that knee too. I rested for a week and thought that I would be fine but last week I limped out of the canyons, it’s not getting better I’m afraid. 

Jonas always helps me out whenever I have put myself in trouble, this time he gave me the e-mail to an orthopedist and besides giving me a diagnose for the knees, Dr Hanna told me to wrap them hard, take it easy and try to stay away from rugged terrain. I will do my best on that. Nadia came to camp yesterday and I will let her do most of the hikes in hilly terrain.

 We have a pretty good feeling for the new trap area now. Most likely we will build a trap line in a half-circle around the biggest mountain in the area. The snow leopard mating season starts in February and according to Tom, the mountains echo from cat’s screams. Now, I’m thinking like this, if I was on the prowl, looking for a suitable mate and the best way to locate on is to listen alternatively scream and hope they will here me, where would I go?

 High 

What will be waiting for me on the way up the highest place or coming down from it? 

Traps 

Ha, this snow leopard trapping is a piece of a cake. That is if the leopards actually step in the traps and the snares close in and…

 At least we are scouting the area thoroughly, we are mapping all signs of snow leopards and checking for good trap sites, when we have the entire trap line figured out we will put out the trap cameras and after that it’s time to pack up and leave for UB…

 It is 800 km to UB and Nadia and I will drive it ourselves I think. I know what you are thinking; 800 km isn’t much to whine about. But it takes 24 hours if one drives non-stop. There are no roads, more dirt tracks and these can move in the same manner as the nomads. I think that we basically set out in the general direction of UB and hope to get there eventually… Well, that will be a new experience and I am excited to try it. I will leave for Sweden on the 17^thof November (if we have reached UB by then…)

 Obviously it will be great to come home and meet everyone again but it doesn’t feel just good. We got a good start and it feels bad to throw in the towel. Tom had contacted a really good cat trapper, Brian Janssen, who was scheduled to come and help me setting the traps. I sure hope that he will be able to come early next year instead. It would be great to spend some time with a guy who has done this a lot and learn new things.