Orjan is a Swedish PhD student who bought a one-way ticket to Mongolia to work at the base camp of our long-term research project.  These are his adventures…

Thanks for following Orjan’s adventures. If you saw this post a few days ago, we have a treat for you: Orjan sent a few last blog posts while he was in Ulaanbaatar, so be sure to scroll down and red them. Now he really is on holiday. He will return to base camp next year. In the meantime, we’ll keep posting updates from camp under the Category “Notes from Base Camp.”

Orjan is a Swedish PhD student who bought a one-way ticket to Mongolia to work at the base camp of our long-term research project.  These are his adventures…

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.

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.

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.

Orjan is a Swedish PhD student who bought a one-way ticket to Mongolia to work at the base camp of our long-term research project.  These are his adventures…

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 it is to listen, then 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 [Ulaanbaatar]…

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 17th of November (if we have reached UB by then…)

Orjan is a Swedish PhD student who bought a one-way ticket to Mongolia to work at the base camp of our long-term research project.  These are his adventures…

The camp is being invaded by camels! For the last three days, a pack of 20-30 Bactrian camels have been hanging out in and around camp. They are a little shy but not enough to stay away from the little flower bed at the patio, bastards… I have discovered that camels are very hungry individuals that will eat almost anything, fast. I have always wanted a camel and I think that I wrote earlier that apparently one needs to have at least two camels, otherwise they will be unhappy. Well, I studied my immobilization guide book to see if we have any good drugs to knock down a camel. Midgi thought that it was a very good idea but I realized that it would be hard to hide the camels in case their owner would come looking for them. I will have to investigate how much a camel costs and if there are any requirements involved in owning and driving one (Tom said that it’s pretty hard to learn camel-handling).

I actually have a Mongolian driver’s license. There are some categories that we don’t have back home but I have not found camel so I think that I will be fine from a legal standpoint.

Sorry, this was suppose to be a vehicle post, I think that camels can count as vehicles though.

When we came here Tom said that when he worked here he had seat belts installed in his car and everyone who saw that thought is was funny since the first thing that most people would do when they bought a car was to cut the seat belts off and throw them out (assuming there were any, Russian vans don’t have any I think).

Well, a couple of days after our Delica (which is a fairly modern car) came Midgi asked me what the warning light on the dashboard was. I explained that it meant that at least one person in the car didn’t use their seat belt. He thought this was extremely funny and laughed for a long, long time. One time when we came to Gurvantes we passed a police and Midgi put on the seat belt immediately. I think that you can get a ticket if you don’t wear seat belts in case the car is equipped with them, which might be why they throw them out…

For avid Orjan Fans: Orjan goes on to talk about killing the motorbike on Mongolian mountain terrian, and mishaps with navigation. If you would like to read these stories and more (and some funny moments from Orjan’s past), visit his personal blog here.  

Orjan is a Swedish PhD student who bought a one-way ticket to Mongolia to work at the base camp of our long-term research project.  These are his adventures…

I have collected all trap cameras and am moving them to a new area. Mt. Chris will be the north western corner of the trap area. Basically, we will search for good trap sites in a square of 3x 3 km from Mt. Chris, more or less.

My knees have taken a little beating and to minimize the hiking (it will take some hiking to find new trap sites) I decided to close the traps. At the time, this seemed reasonable because we haven’t had an unmarked snow leopard visiting the trap area since the 25th of August. Well, four days ago “Inquisitive” stepped in two traps. Or rather, where there should have been two traps. The cat was named Inquisitive by the summer team, reason is that the first pictures we have of it, he/she looks into the camera from a distance of about 20 cm, and the cat keeps looking for a while. Our guess is that the cat is a young individual; it behaves a bit reckless, not at all like Bayartai (Longtail). I think that our youngster is a little afraid of Longtail and dared to visit the trap area because Longtail has been away for a little while. It seems as if he is heading back now though so hopefully, Inquisitive will move into my new trap area.

In a little while that is, I have to build it first.

Orjan is a Swedish PhD student who bought a one-way ticket to Mongolia to work at the base camp of our long-term research project.  These are his adventures…

It’s getting cold. Or actually, the “microclimates” here differ a lot, making it extremely hard to dress correctly. The last nights have been between 7 and 12 degrees below zero and day time ranges between 2 below zero and 5 above. The tricky part is that the sun is still warm (surprising, eh?), so in the middle of the day, and when hiking on a sunny slope, it can be pretty hot. On the other hand, it is always more or less windy and the wind is really cold. Up on the ridgelines and in shaded canyons it can be pretty cold. So I reckon that if the temperature is zero, that could mean plus 10 in a sunny slope or 15 below in a windy, shaded canyon (the canyons are cool as it is).

A good, thin wind-breaker, a wool cap, gloves and extra clothes in the backpack is very fashionable among westerners this year. Though, the locals do not seem to share the view of what is “hip”. Every time I leave, Oyuna looks very troubled and thinks that I have way too little clothes on.

Another funny thing is that Oyuna doesn’t want me to leave on my own. Since there is no one else in camp that makes fieldwork a bit complicated, unless I bring the cat [the camp’s resident housecat, Friday]. She actually followed me to check a kill site (Oyuna that is, not the cat). We had to hike 700 meters, not flat but not really rugged either. Even so, I was a bit afraid that she would fall over dead because she coughed and breathed very hard. After that I think that she decided that I might be able to take care of myself.

Besides putting an extra layer of felt on the ger [to prepare for winter], we also shoveled dirt on the edges of the walls to prevent the cold wind from blowing in. This helped substantially; it is almost too warm inside now. I brought out my winter sleeping bag yesterday but I wasn’t able to close it until six o’clock in the morning…

Snow is coming to Santa Barbara, CA in celebration of snow leopards. The Santa Barbara Zoo is going to truck in tons (literally) of snow for their Snow Leopard Festival, and visitors are invited to come and enjoy. This is the second year the zoo has brought in snow, and last year it looks like there was enough to make sledding mounds. Way to make the snow leopards feel at home. If you are in the SoCal area, here are the details:

Snow Leopard Festival
Santa Barbara Zoo, December 7, 2008
10am til the snow melts

Remember Shanti–the snow leopard cub at Binder Park Zoo who had a puppy as a companion (see post below “Puppies raise snow leopard”)? Well she’s growing up. An article from the Battle Creek Inquirer says that Shanti, now almost five months old, is off the bottle food and coming into her own as a young adult. Her puppy friend, who is now also bigger, is off to live somewhere else and Shanti will be slowly introduced to the zoos other snow leopards.

According to The Daily Graphic in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the local Assiniboine Park Zoo is bringing in a male snow leopard from Calgary.  He’ll provide some company to Winnipeg’s lone female, Lhassa, who has been without a mate since her longtime partner Dmitri died two years ago. The pair had produced more than a dozen cubs together, who have moved on to zoos in Alaska, and Buenos Aires, Argentina. The male leopard from Calgary is being brought in with the hope that he and Lhassa will get along well enough to have some cubs of their own. When the male arrives in a week or two, he will be quarantined in the zoo hospital for a month, then placed in an enclosure next to Lhassa’s. The idea is to get each leopard used to the other’s presence. That first meeting can be unpredictable.

Misako Fujita, the #1 expert on snow leopard history & breeding in Japan, has just told me how they went about treating SUOU, the 4-month-old cub who had a broken hind right leg, without the risk of isolating him from constant contact with his family at such a young age.

The vets & keeper decided that it was too risky to separate them completely and allow the other two boys outside with their mum, while SUOU was sitting inside by himself, and not maintaining permanent contact with all of them. They came up with the solution of confining him to a smaller cage inside the main cage, so that his brothers & mother would remain familiar with his scent, and not attack him once he was released. As he was confined this way for a month, it was a worrying time for the keeper.

However, they were all let outside together last Sunday, for the first time in 6 weeks! I’m glad to say that, after having seen them playing myself on Tuesday, everything has worked out perfectly, and he was as rough & tumble as his 2 brothers.

Steve.

L- R : Kohaku, Suou, Yuki, Han.