Traveling across the north-eastern states of India had always been a dream… everything about this little known region  was fascinating – the people, the animals, the plants and of course the amazing landscape! It feels like altogether another country, and having to get an Inner Line Permit (even though I’m Indian) to enter here makes it that much more foreign.

I’ve recently started a project through a grant from the CEPF (Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund), National Geographic Society, ATREE and the Gorgas Science Foundation/UTB-TSC to document the richness of this incredible biodiversity hotspot.This will be my region of primary focus over the next year. Expect to see the book similar in form to the earlier book about the western ghats by the end of 2010…

I will posting some images from my travel somewhat regularly in this blog, and with my new found ability to be connected even from fairly remote regions I do look forward to keeping an active blog going…

That’s me posing for a photograph after photographing a white-capped redstart (No the bird on left on the rock with snow falling is not a White-capped redstart, and I don’t know what it is… yep i forgot my birdbook, so anyone out there with a bird book, please do send me an ID on this one please) along the road near sela pass at an elevation of twelve thousand feet or so in arunachal pradesh. This place is enroute to Tawang – a place I’ve heard much of for it’s spectacular scenery but never been to… Couldn’t go there this time either due to time and weather constraints… It was still snowing at the pass and although we hoped to find many flowering species we didn’t find any in the snow-covered landscape! Need to come back here in mid-may

Before getting here Dr. Kamal Bawa and I spent a few fabulous days at EagleNest Wildlife Sanctuary. At Lama camp I was fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of the Liochichla bugun – the most recently discovered new bird species that shot Eaglenest into the global must-do map for birdwatchers. It’s a tough bird to photograph in the wild with it’s skulking habits and quick movements! ANd wielding the 300-800mm without IS is like trying to watch something with a high-powered binoculars from a ship on a rough sea! It was a futile attempt, but some reason now to have to go back to the region. The highlight from Lama was the chance sighting of a pair of Yellow-throated Martens as they boldly bounced around across the large branches in the canopy just before entering the camp area… That was pretty exciting! It was also the first set of images made on the Sigma 300-800mm lens – i had just barely taken the lens out of it’s case!

Day two was spent at Bompu Camp at a much lower elevation than Lama Camp: It was a full moon night, so I was running a timelapse on one end of the camp while I had a Blacklight running to attract moths and other little critters on the other end. It took not more than five minutes to have a blanket litterally draped with moths of all sorts – noctuids, geometrids, sphinx moths, hook tips, microlepidopterans, etc. etc. too many… I couldn’t keep up. Soon after midnight, I turned the light off and went to sleep. Our mornings here start by 4AM, so it was imperative that I caught a few hours of sleep…

The scenery at Eaglenest was simply spectacular. I can’t wait to get back and spend more time up here in these remote mountains

I’m sure I wanted to put up more pictures and all that, but I have a slow internet connection and lots more work to do before I have no internet connection. So I best just put this up for upload now and the rest later…whenever later is.