Travelling in the North-East in the summer of 2006
Guwahati >> Eaglenest >> Tawang >> Nameri >> Kaziranga >> Shillong >> Cherrapunjee
+Previous: Travelling to Eaglenest National Park in Arunachal Pradesh
+Next: About travelling in the North East India
+Go to the beginning of the series
My primary intent of travelling to Arunachal Pradesh was to participate in Vacation For Conservation project.
Vacation For Conservation was an idea conceived by Ramana Atreya of Kaati Trust, Pune towards conserving the wilderness and biodiversity of Eaglenest National Park. It is part of a larger project called ‘Eaglenest Biodiversity Project’, intended to save Eaglenest National Park from degradation and destruction.
BACKGROUND
Eaglenest National Park is located in the border of Arunachal Pradesh in West Kameng, adjoining Pakke Tiger Reserve in Assam. It is a region with widely varying altitudes – from 500m to as high as 3200m. The region has thickly wooded ever-green forest and has remained pristine except for a small mud-road that runs in the middle of the forest. But recently, the National Park’s survival was threatened by Indian Army’s decision to make a 2-lane all season road through the park. The website of Eaglenest Biodiversity Project lists the dangers that come with the road.
Until now Eaglenest has been protected by the inability of timber trucks to navigate the jeep track. While people indulged in some hunting the forest remained intact and has more-or-less recovered from the trauma of the construction of the first road 40 years ago. This protection is no longer valid. Some years ago the Indian army began widening the Eaglenest track to handle two lanes of their heavy truck traffic. They have also blasted new alignments in several sections devastating the fragile mountain terrain. Without going into the merits of the often twisted development v/s conservation debate it is clear that a regular highway will directly ruin more than 10% of the sanctuary area and furthermore will be a permanent canker through which the usual suspects — from indigent encroachers to timber merchants; from subsistence poachers to high society carnivores with a taste for wild meat — will ravage the area. At the moment the area has some breathing space with the Supreme Court staying all work on the road until final orders are passed.
The other threat to the National Park is common across all National Parks in India – man’s conflict with nature. There is pressure from the increasing population which assumes a right to its forests in the form of chopping wood, hunting animals, etc. Eaglenest Biodiversity Project hopes to address these issues to protect the park area.
VACATION FOR CONSERVATION(VFC)
VFC is an idea that is meant to make the forest work for generating income to the locals without destroying it. It focuses on eco-tourism with complete involvement of the locals and generate income for them. Eco-tourism worldwide was an idea conceived with the same intent, but soon lost its original goal and turned out to be a money making option for large hotel and resort chains. But in Eaglenest, it serving the right purpose via VFC. Birders and wildlife enthusiasts are invited to travel to Arunachal and visit Eaglenest and spend time learning about and studying the birds and other wildlife in the region. The local Bugund community will charge royalties for each day of stay in the park, which will be used for the benefit of the community. In effect, people around the park benefit by conserving the park area and are also restrained from damaging the forest.
For more about Eaglenest Biodiversity Project and VFC, visit the project webpage.
I was in Arunachal as part of the first ever group of VFC participants. We spent a week in Eaglenest and had a good time there identifying many rare species of birds that we do not get to see elsewhere in India. More on it will follow in the coming days.
To be continued…
Travelling in the North-East in the summer of 2006
Guwahati >> Eaglenest >> Tawang >> Nameri >> Kaziranga >> Shillong >> Cherrapunjee
+Previous: Umananda Temple and Peacock Island, Guwahati
+Next: Vacation for Conservation
+Go to the beginning of the series
My fellow travellers started arriving later in the day. We all met in the hotel lobby, got to know each other and quickly went on with long conversations on birds, Eaglenest and other things we had in our mind for the journey into Arunachal Pradesh.
Our team was in interesting assortment of people. We had a management consultant who worked in the retail industry, a writer who write children’s books, two students of post graduation in biodiversity, two software engineers, an officer in the Indian Forest Service, a beautician and a nomadic traveler(me!). Come to think of it, if it was a gathering of 10 people somewhere in southern parts of India, it would most likely have been 10 guys from the IT industry! Conservation and keen interest in birds and nature was the only thing we had in common that brought us together. It made us at home with each other and we quickly made friends and gelled well with each other.
A bridge near Doimari village in Arunachal where we stopped for a short break. Note the thick forest all around
Some of us in the team were very keen to be of use in saving nature. One of the members spent a lot of her spare time working for ‘Kids for Tigers‘. The writer in the group spent a lot of time writing books to create awareness about environment in children and the IFS officer was leading conservation efforts in Kanchenjunga National Park. I was in great company and I knew that my days in Eaglenest are going to be spent doing something worthy.
We were up and ready to leave at 5am next morning and took a comfortable bus to Tezpur. It broke down after an hour of journey and we had to wait for a spare bus to arrive. Our enthusiastic birding group smelled opportunity in this too and were quickly out with their binocs and bird-books in the lookout for new birds in this unfamiliar region. Further, we stopped again at Nagaon for breakfast and reached Tezpur around 12pm.
There was a jeep waiting in Tezpur to take us through rest of the journey to our camp in Eaglenest. We drove through hot and humid planes via Missamari village in Assam and Doimari in Arunachal. We frequently stopped to sight and hear new birds we had never seen earlier, like the Lesser Adjutant Storks, Grey Backed Shrike and many more. The road started climbing as soon as we left Assam and crossed Arunachal border. Empty and barren stretches of Assam gave way to thick, impenetrable and undisturbed evergreen forests.
We drove till evening in thick forest with our narrow road bisecting the forest. The village of Doimari with a small population and a forest checkpost were the only places where we encountered signs of human presence. We continued to stop for seeing wildlife and were rewarded with sightings of Capped Langur, Khaleej Pheasant, Pied-Hornbill, etc.. We also passed a month old carcass of a huge decaying elephant which had slipped down a slide and died.
It was much after sunset when we reached our campsite. We were all tired after an entire day’s journey and were glad to have finally made it. After a simple and filling dinner, we crashed in the camp looking forward to the next day.
To be continued…
Travelling in the North-East in the summer of 2006
Guwahati >> Eaglenest >> Tawang >> Nameri >> Kaziranga >> Shillong >> Cherrapunjee
+Previous: Impressions of Guwahati
+Next: Travelling to Eaglenest National Park in Arunachal Pradesh
+Go to the beginning of the series
The next morning, I started out to Kacheri Ghat on the bank of Brahmaputra. I was taking a ferry from here to Peacock Island – a small landmass with a hillock housing the Umananda Temple.
Peacock Island. You can see how wide Brahmaputra is. Infact this is one of the areas where the river runs narrow compared to rest of Assam
As my ferry took off, I realized how huge Brahmaputra is. It was summer time when most of the rivers in India empty or at least mellow, but none of that applies to Brahmaputra. Even when the water level is low, it still is wide and flows at a considerable speed. Despite being so large, the map shows that Brahmaputra flows in a narrow channel near Guwahati compared to rest of Assam. I got to see her again in Tezpur where the bridge across the river is a few miles long.
Ferry to Peacock Island
I got down from the ferry and walked around on a bridle path that took me around the island. It took less than 10 minutes to complete the circle. The island has a mix of Bamboo and evergreen tropical trees and is rocky at some parts. The tiny island housed lot of life. I saw a few Asian Koels, some warblers, a Grey Tit, Magpie Robins, Jungle Babblers and a bunch of Mynas. I returned to this island a few weeks later to get photographs of the Golden Langurs, and also shot pictures of a pair of Grey Tits. The Langurs are a star attraction of the island.
Grey Tit
Golden Langurs are endemic primates found only in Manas National Park bordering Assam and Bhutan. A priest of Umananda temple is said to have brought a few young ones to the island and let them free. They grew up in the island, confined by the Brahmaputra and have grown used to humans. They are so accustomed that you can sit right next to them like you would sit with a buddy, and they still ignore your presence. May be they would even be thinking about saying hello to you but are constrained of speech. The Langur’s eye is very human like and has a strange draw when you look at it. They also looked very bored and lazy as they have little to do but eat what people give them, and roam around in the tiny island.
A Golden Langur
Umananda temple is located at the center of the island on the top of a hillock. It is a small temple, with the sanctum sanctorum located below ground level. Sanctorum is lit by wick lamps and little sunlight enters in. The burning lamps and the darkness surrounding it create an atmosphere of peace in the room.
I returned from the island and checked if I can take an evening cruise on Brahmaputra. But the cruises were not operating owing to a holiday, so all I could do is to spend the evening in my hotel.
To be continued..