The nomad life

I collected all the traps and packed up the trap camp about a week ago. Since then I have lived in Base camp, quite nice to have a cook again. And to live in a bigger ger, now I realize what big difference a few extra square meters do.

Today we moved and built the new camp. I checked our cameras again and there were no snow leopard pictures on them, so in two weeks we have not gotten a single picture of an un-collared individual. Could be a coincidence and tonight we might get tons of pictures of snow leopards but the cameras are just ten km from Base camp and I will move back here in June when there will be more staff from SLT living here. So we would likely have trapped poor Aztai a couple of more times without cause. From June and onwards, it will be good to trap him because his collar will be due to be changed soon. All together, this made me decide to go for the female with kittens. Ok, I might have gone there anyways but now it feels 100% right. 

Eight months ago I didn’t know much about neither snow leopards nor trapping. But Tom and Guy has been great trapping instructors and all the SLT staff, and mainly Nadia, has tried to teach me as much as they can about snow leopards. This will be the first time that I chose trap sites and build the trap line without aid of any experienced trapper. 

A couple of years ago a researcher at Grimso Research Station told me that to understand how individuals of the species I studied behaved and thought (at that time wolves) I had to observe them. If I couldn’t observe the wolves, then I should observe dogs and combine the knowledge that I gained with information from snow tracking, collars, where they chose day-rests etc. In the case with snow leopards, I have studied Friday, searched for tracks and signs of the snow leopards, where their prey is abundant looked at trap camera pictures and so on. I think that I have gotten a little bit towards understanding them.  

So I have put on my snow leopard glasses to try and to see the world as they do and then put on the snow leopard suit and move through the world as they do. Or maybe rather as they move through the flat parts of their world. I have no ambition to start rock-climbing vertical walls.

The last week I have spent running up and down mountains and canyons to find the best trap sites. It’s a strenuous job since it’s not enough to find a good canyon, I still have to check all the neighboring canyons to make sure that they are not better. 

I have found five really good sites. One of them is the best that I have ever seen. I will take some pictures and explain once they are uploaded, hard to describe in just words. But the site is so good that if I don’t catch a snow leopard in that canyon in April or May, I will accept any role in any fund-raising event that SLT can come up with. 

In a couple of days, my girlfriend Emma will come here and stay for almost three weeks. It will be so great to see her again. I’ve been here for a while and will not go home until the end of summer. Miji and I will go to Dalandzadgad to pick her up. I have some errands to do in town and I thought it could be nice to take a shower since the last one I took was on the 29th of January. But who’s counting days…

The “Oyuna crazy fire”

If you come to Mongolia you will notice that no matter how cold it is outside it will be very, very warm inside the gers. And warmest of all the gers is the one that Oyuna currently is in. That’s what I think… Last autumn she could come into my ger and throw wood or coal into the stove and immediately go again, leaving me sweating and panting. My protests helped little, she just waited a minute until my focus was elsewhere and then she struck, throwing a large chunk of coal into the fire. I tried opening the door and leave it open to make her understand, nope, she still threw in more wood, I stripped down until I was sitting in my underwear, didn’t help, she kept throwing in wood. I left the door opened, in my underwear… nope didn’t help either. 

When Guy arrived Nadia and I told him about the “Oyuna Crazy fires” (“Oyuna galzo gal” in Mongolian) and that these were hotter than anything he had experienced in Africa. Don’t think that he believed us at first…

As I came back to camp one of the coldest and windiest days this winter I saw that the door was left wide-open. My first thought was that it had blown open and broken, you see it was so cold that I was wearing my salopette trousers, down jacket, face mask, ski goggles… the lot… and I couldn’t imagine that any living soul would leave the door open if it was possible to close it. The Russian van was parked outside meaning that Byamba had arrived from UB with some supplies (and the new motorbike), I should have understood by now, but no. 

I ducked and entered through the opening, couldn’t see anything because my goggles fogged up instantly, took them off and saw four people (Guy, Nadia, Miji and Byamba) spread out around the walls of ger, their faces red and sweating. The scene could have been from a Finnish sauna except they were not naked, wearing knives, or drinking vodka but at least the heat didn’t contradict this idea. There was a fifth person too, Oyuna, she was sitting between the stove and the gas burner (the hottest place), cooking food. She was the only one that looked happy and totally unbothered by the heat. The ger is so warm that our candles melt (I have pictures that will be uploaded).

Too bad we don’t have an infinite supply of wood or coal and as you know

these herders can’t plan why I am sure that Oyuna will keep throwing in fuel in the stove with the door open to regulate the heat until she is down to the last piece of wood. Then she will look at me, expecting me to get more fire wood. Which shouldn’t be a problem, I mean it’s not as if we are in the middle of the Gobi desert, right?