Chlidonias Goes To Asia, part five: 2016-2017

LADAKH

PART THREE

The next morning was my first real day of snow leoparding. The sun doesn't come up until a bit after 6am, and there is no electricity (apart for a generator in the evening) so there's no point getting up earlier. Usually I would wake up and then just lie there for an hour or so before it was light enough to bother rising. Dolma would bring a thermos of tea to my room around 6.10, and then at 7am I would go down for breakfast which would be some form of fried dough and a fried omelette. I had little appetite for the first couple of days but soon got over that, and by the end of my stay there I was even starting to tolerate the Tibetan cuisine (it is based largely around dough made of wheat-flour and water, with additions of root vegetables and sometimes rice and dal). Breakfast would be as stated above; lunch would be much the same but also including a boiled egg and potato (I took lunch out with me every day); dinner would usually be some sort of stew of dough and vegetables. The trick was to eat a dough item at the same time as a vegetable item to enable you to actually get it down. If you tried just eating a dough item by itself it would end up being like trying to chew a wad of glue.

My basic plan was to walk each day down to the Husing and Tarbung Valleys and sit somewhere high and advantageous to scan the cliffs for signs of life. It takes so long to walk anywhere at this altitude that there seemed little point in trying to move around too much - planting myself in one likely spot for the day was probably the best strategy. The real problem (of course) is that snow leopards are incredibly shy and elusive, and also incredibly well camouflaged. There could be a dozen snow leopards within a hundred metres of you in this terrain and you'd never see them until they move. And from one position you can see maybe five to ten cliff-faces and mountain-sides, out of the hundreds or thousands that a snow leopard could currently be on.

The mountains here are actually amazingly varied. You've got domed sand-coloured ones, and then right behind those there would be deep purple ones, and then behind those there would be great jagged spires. It was like someone had been tasked with designing the Himalayas but had never seen mountain ranges before, so they just emptied out the whole box in one spot and said "that'll do". The rocks come in every colour imaginable, including bright green and red and white; some rocks are striped with bands of different colours. There are cliffs which look like they are covered in fuzzy green fur because they are entirely composed of shattering slate. Slopes may be jumbles of rocks, sheer slabs of granite, or screes of slate chips. Some areas look straight out of Barsoom. The terrain is really quite bewildering in its complexity. And it's completely silent apart for the calls of choughs now and then, or the occasional clatter of stones dislodged by bharal. Sometimes it felt like I was on the moon.

So this first morning, I walked past the groups of chukar and hill pigeons in the village, over the frozen stream, through the second campsite, and made my way back down the Rumbak Valley to the Husing Valley. It took a little longer than anticipated because I kept stopping along the way to scan the surrounding cliffs. Near the Husing Valley I came across a small group of bharal (blue sheep), which are the snow leopard's prey. As winter progresses the bharal move down the mountains away from the snow (so they can still feed), and the snow leopards follow them down. This group was small, only eight animals, mostly females and young. I saw the same group almost every day in the Husing Valley. There is no hunting here so all the animals are very casual around humans. They aren't tame but they aren't afraid either - I suppose you could say they are aloof. So long as you don't approach too closely (say, within fifty metres) they mostly ignore you.

Today was almost like a reconnaissance, to get the lay of the land as it were. I climbed (slowly, breathing hard) up the Husing Valley. After a good amount of climbing quite a way up I decided that tour groups wouldn't be taking old people up through such rugged terrain, so I headed downwards. As it turned out the scanning positions for the tour groups aren't very far up into the valley after all. The prime spot is still about twenty minutes in, but that is only because you have to keep stopping to breathe. Once I had found what seemed like the the best spot to sit and wait, I did just that. The only animals I saw were yellow-billed choughs. But it would have been silly to have expected to see a snow leopard on my first day - especially when doing it solo you should never expect to see a snow leopard, simply hope to see a snow leopard!

The main problem with staying in the village rather than at the first campsite is the one of travel times. You don't get down to the Husing Valley until about 9am and then in order to get back to the village before dark you have to leave the valley at about 3.30 or 4pm (giving yourself 20-30 minutes to get down from the Husing, an hour up the Rumbak, and then 20-30 minutes to the village itself). So the days are much shorter than they would be otherwise. Heading back to the village on this first day I saw the bharal herd again, the same large-eared pikas as before, and two new birds for the trip, brown dipper and brown accentor (the latter being a lifer for me). Back at the village I saw another woolly hare.

The next two days were repeats of the first - down to the Husing, sit and watch. The same herd of eight bharal, the same flock of yellow-billed choughs. No snow leopard. Still, I wasn't too worried. Three days out of my allotted eleven was fine, and I wasn't really expecting to see one so soon anyway. I was, however, becoming a little concerned that the only bharal I was seeing down there were the same eight every day. The weather did seem warmer than I had been expecting, and if there are no bharal moving down then there won't be any snow leopards! I decided that for the fourth day I would visit the Tarbung Valley and see what, if anything, was happening there. When I got back to the village (on the third day) there was a flock of twenty bharal on the nearby slopes, which the next morning had become forty. Hopefully that was a good sign.

The following morning, as I was heading out of the village to the Tarbung Valley, a man with some better English than most asked where I was going. I said to the Tarbung and he scoffed and said (as far as I could tell) that there were no snow leopards down there yet - I needed to go upwards towards Yurutse, not downwards. I decided to stick with the Tarbung for now (I had already told the people at my homestay where I was going, as I did every morning in case I hadn't returned in the evening) and then would try going upwards tomorrow. Further down the valley I passed the donkey man who I had seen in the Husing for the last two days (his donkeys are sent up there to graze). I said I was going to the Tarbung and he replied "snow leopard, no". I couldn't tell if he was asking if I had seen any yet, or telling me there were none down there yet. But it was starting to tie in with me not seeing many bharal and my worry that it was just too early for the cats to be moving downwards. On the other hand, I knew the tour groups start coming up in September or October, and why would they do that if that was too early for any success?

The Tarbung Valley mouth is about ten or fifteen minutes walk further back down the road from the mouth of the Husing Valley. It is on the opposite side, and you need to cross the little river to get to it. The access isn't as easy as the Husing - I mean, it isn't difficult, it is just the initial part is forcing through some scrubby juniper and then there are a couple of precipitous donkey-tracks across the sides of steep hillsides, sometimes no wider than one of my boots, the first one winding across a slope of gravelly sand and the second across a nerve-wracking scree of slate shards. Once past these (and the return seemed even more treacherous!) the valley is really nice with good vantage spots. I saw a small group of bharal, perhaps even the same goup from the Husing, a golden eagle, and a big flock of rock doves. I was seeing pairs or singles of golden eagles and lammergeiers quite often, but always soaring, never close up. The doves were my first truly wild rock doves. This species is the original of the domestic pigeon, the feral form being what you see in cities all over the world. There were a few around Rumbak but I wasn't sure if they were actual wild birds (as the hill pigeons were) or domestics. These ones in the Tarbung were the genuine article though, so I was quite pleased to see them.

There were, however, no snow leopards.

Tomorrow I would try looking higher up the mountains, further up than Rumbak.

 

LADAKH

PART FOUR


With no luck on the snow leopard front at the lower valleys, on my fifth search-day I headed higher towards Yurutse. Apparently there are no snow leopards around Yurutse itself (not sure why - although there are Eurasian lynx there), but the trail along the way is through snow leopard territory. Yurutse is not so much a village as one homestead (which is also a homestay). There is a whole network of homestays through the Hemis National Park, every village and one-building town has at least one of them and they are all the same price (currently 1200 rupees per person). I wasn't going to stay at Yurutse because it is only an hour's walk from Rumbak so it didn't seem to make any sense to do so. In terms of altitude: Leh is at 3500 metres, Rumbak is at 4050 metres, and Yurutse is at 4200 metres.

From Rumbak I walked back towards the second campsite, but before reaching that there is a steep dirt track up a hill. That is the start of the Yurutse trail. It is another horrible donkey-track looping round the hillside and then dropping down to the river. After crossing the river (the channels are only narrow, so no need to get your feet wet) the trail then resumes up the valley. After maybe half an hour it leaves the valley floor and travels along the hillsides, and after another half an hour you reach Yurutse. I kept an eye on all the surrounding hills and ridges but no snow leopards did I see. However I did come across a sizeable flock of gamebirds some way ahead which I assumed would be chukar. When I put the binoculars on them, however, they proved to be Himalayan snowcocks, the bird I most wanted to see when up here but which I had thought if I did see them would only be specks on a distant hill. I started taking shots from afar, gradually moving closer until they were no more than thirty feet away. They were giving vague curlew-like calls but didn't seem too concerned, although they still kept their distance as they moved along the hill. Beautiful birds.

At Yurutse I was greeted by a flock of chukar in the small field out front. On the roof of the building was a yellow dog, slyly watching me approach, but like the two dogs living at Rumbak he was friendly in an I'm-keeping-away-from-that-strange-man way. At the other end of the field was another flock of partridges, and these turned out to be Tibetan partridges - the third Himalayan gamebird of the day! I'd seen one Tibetan partridge in China a few years back but these ones were much more relaxed, albeit not very approachable where they were.

It seemed like the best thing to do now that I was at Yurutse was to just keep going higher. Half an hour after the homestead I came to the first base-camp for people going over Kanda La which is up at 4900 metres (La is a mountain pass, so "the Kanda Pass"). This was the start of Tibetan argali territory, a type of wild sheep. At this time of year they should have moved up and over the pass, but as it seemed to be unseasonably warm still I hoped I might get lucky. I have seen argali in Mongolia, but I always like to see animals again if I can. There was a sign near the base-camp showing the valleys and saying (in English and Ladakhi) that this area was reserved for argali so no grazing of donkeys or yaks was permitted. However I still saw yaks higher up, and the trail was dotted with donkey droppings.

I could see the toilet building at the second base-camp way up the mountain, so I headed that way. The trail between the two base-camps follows along above a shallow valley filled with low red scrub and this turned out to be filled with woolly hares. Every so often one would bound away across the hill and then pause, tail flicking, waiting to see what I would do. I had been thinking that there wasn't much chance of seeing lynx here because they feed on the hares. The hares in the village only came out in the late afternoon so I figured the lynx would be hunting by night, but seeing the hares here active by day makes me think it might be possible after all. I only went about halfway to the second base-camp because I started getting a high altitude headache, so instead I just sat on the hill to have lunch while watching for animals. No lynx appeared, but I did see a mountain weasel (again, like I saw in China!). It was the first windy day I had encountered, and it was a mite chilly on the open slope so I headed back down.

Back past Yurutse I found a small group of bharal. One was staring intently back down the trail along which I'd come. I looked back and saw the yellow dog sitting on the hill watching me leave, probably regretting not having taken the opportunity to savage me when I first passed by.

The following day I returned to Yurutse. No snowcocks or Tibetan partridges, but there was a pair of red-billed choughs. Interestingly, I only ever saw the red-billed choughs in pairs or as singles, while the yellow-billed choughs were always in large flocks. On this day I kept going all the way to the second base-camp, headache be damned. I had passed several groups of bharal already, but when I was scanning the hills around the second base-camp I saw a large herd of sheep on a far slope. They must be argali I thought. But no, they also were bharal. I had got a worse headache than yesterday, but the trail ahead looked pretty inviting. Maybe there were argali up round the other side of that mountain. I sat around at the second base-camp for a while, ate my lunch, and then forged on ahead. I didn't go all the way to Kanda La, so I'm not sure how high I got that day, but I found no argali. I think they must have all been over the other side already.

On the way up between the base-camps I saw four woolly hares. On the way back I counted fourteen without even trying. In the afternoon they just sit on the hillside, often at the mouths of the Himalayan marmot burrows (which are all in hibernation now, so I didn't see them), and their fur almost glows in the sun. You don't even need binoculars to find them, they are that obvious. I spent most of the rest of the day hanging out hoping for lynx and seeing nothing but hares.

In the evening I took an Ibuprofen for the headache and hoped I'd wake up in the morning.

 

LADAKH

PART FIVE


Snow leopard diary. Day seven. I am disconsolate. How long can a man go without seeing a snow leopard before he goes mad?

I went back to the Husing Valley and on the way saw three small groups of bharal, so at least there were a few more down there now. A wallcreeper, a golden eagle, and a pair of red-billed choughs made a change from the usual nothing.

There was supposed to be a track that went from somewhere beyond Rumbak village to the top of the Husing Valley, so for the eighth day I thought that might be worth checking out - still the Husing Valley but also high up. There was some sort of miscommunication though and I never found this track. Instead I just went all the way to Stok La, a mountain pass like Kanda La and likewise set at 4900 metres. Heading from Rumbak (in the opposite direction to the Yurutse trail) I at first walked for an hour and a half along a wide river valley, facing straight into the rising sun. If there's one thing destined to make someone go insane it's a slow death-march in the Himalayas into the rising sun. Eventually the trail starting going upwards into the hills, shaded from the sun a bit more. There were domestic yaks and ponies up here, but of wild animals I saw only red-billed choughs, a pair of Himalayan snowcocks, and a large moth whirring its wings in the sun to warm up. Marmot burrows were scattered here and there, and wolf prints were prominent on the trail.

Eventually I reached the jagged mountains through which Stok La passes. The final track was a zig-zagging ascent up a near-vertical slope. There's a weird optical illusion which happens up here. When you are on a steep slope and look down you may as well be clinging to the side of a building. But looking upwards from the bottom of that same slope it looks like a gentle rise which you could probably rollerskate up. It's very strange. Anyway, soon I was at the highest non-aeroplane point I have ever been, 4900 metres (16,000 feet) in the Himalayas. Awesome. Still no snow leopards.

On the ninth day I was back at the Husing Valley. I was getting desperate now. Only two days left. Despite everything, the Husing Valley still seemed the best bet. Particularly because a male snow leopard had the previous night walked down the entire length of the Rumbak valley trail and then turned up into the Husing Valley. His footprints were in the sand all the way down. (I say a male because I'm told males and females have differently-shaped pads, and apparently this one was a male). On the way down I saw a white-throated dipper on the river. There were several pairs of brown dippers which I saw every day, so this new one was unexpected. I have seen both species living on one stream in China too, and I still don't understand how they can when they have the same feeding behaviours. Presumably one feeds on larger invertebrates than the other so they don't directly compete. Another new bird for the trip was a female white-winged grosbeak, again a bird I had previously seen in the Chinese mountains. I only saw twenty or so bird species while in Ladakh, and only three of them were lifers - most of the others were ones also seen in China. There were slightly more bharal today - three small groups along the Rumbak Valley and the regular group in the Husing. Did I see a snow leopard today? No, I did not.

So far the days had gone pretty much like this:
Day one: Husing, no snow leopard.
Day two: Husing, no snow leopard.
Day three: Husing, no snow leopard.
Day four: Tarbung, no snow leopard.
Day five: Yurutse, no snow leopard.
Day six: Yurutse, no snow leopard.
Day seven: Husing, no snow leopard.
Day eight: Stok La, no snow leopard.
Day nine: Husing, no snow leopard.

The tenth day was not an exception: back to the Husing, no snow leopard. I spotted a red fox near the first campsite which was the first of the trip, so that was something.

The eleventh day dawned. Would the eleventh day be the eleventh hour that saves the day? I had a taxi coming up at 2pm to collect me. It was do or die. I mean, I couldn't exactly work harder to find a snow leopard because there's not much you can really do except wait for the animal to show itself to you, but I kept my hopes up at least. I said goodbye to the homestay couple and the chukars and the robin accentors, put on my pack, and set off for the Husing Valley one last time. There was even a woolly hare sitting at the last building to say goodbye. I sat up on the ridge in the Husing for my last remaining hours. As if to say "just give up already!" the wind picked up for the first time into a gale, threatening to throw me off the mountain. The taxi came. I went down to the road and left, with the brook laughing merrily behind me and the wind whistling "better luck next tiiiiime Chlidooooooonias..."

 

LADAKH

END-NOTE


So I didn't see a snow leopard. I honestly think this particular year was a late winter, because it did seem unexpectedly warm, and that reduced my chances considerably. However the advice I was given up there was that Jan-Feb is the very best time to look because that is when they are breeding and hence are much more obvious (they lose their natural shyness). Of course November was also supposed to be the best time to look. Anyway, I always say it is better to look for an animal and fail than to not bother looking at all. Situations like the Baikal seal and golden snub-nosed monkeys sting because the failures are caused solely by human agency. A failure to see a snow leopard, however, is just part of the game - and really I just spent two weeks roaming around in the Himalayas by myself, and that is a total win! And it's not like I spent a lot of money on it!

To make it a little better, on the taxi ride back to Leh there was a group of four male Ladakh urials just by Zingchan. The three wild sheep at Hemis are separated by altitude. Right at the top are the argali, much lower down are the urials, and in between are the blue sheep. In summer the blue sheep overlap with the argali, and in winter the blue sheep move downwards and overlap with the urials. I was hoping to see urials (they were a new species for me) so it was a good finish, even without an ounce.

The next day I flew back to Delhi and found myself in the middle of a currency crisis which has turned the whole trip on its head...

 

As commented upon earlier in the thread (on page three), India has crippled its economy intentionally so I'm fleeing to Sri Lanka for the meantime because I have no way of getting cash. I got my electronic visa for Sri Lanka (US$35 = NZ$52) and booked a last-minute too-expensive flight for NZ$260 (with SpiceJet, the cheapest option). Tomorrow at 2.30pm I fly Delhi to Mumbai, arriving 5.30pm, then there's a six hour lay-over, then I fly at midnight on to Colombo, arriving at 1.40am on the 16th. I've paid my hotel bill and what little I have left in my wallet is needed for getting to the airport; I have no money left for food so I'll be a hungry boy until landing in Sri Lanka unless I can find an EFTPOS machine which will accept my card at the airport.


Because no more money will be being spent, here are the latest country stats:

MALAYSIA:
*1192.10 Ringgits spent over eleven days (NZ$397.50, US$284.85, UK£232.90, €261.70)
*Average spent per day: NZ$36.10, US$25.90, UK£21.20, €23.80
*114 birds seen, 2 lifers
*23 mammals seen, 2 lifers

INDIA:
*43,068 Indian rupees spent over 25 days (NZ$896, US$635.50, UK£507.50, €590.50)
*Average spent per day: NZ$35.80, US$25.40, UK£20.30, €23.60
*95 birds seen, 14 lifers
*9 mammals seen, 4 lifers
(The low animal numbers are because a lot of the time was spent in Ladakh)

 

hmm, yes I suppose it does seem a little excessive doesn't it. Maybe they are in orbit and that's why I didn't see any...

 

yes I had a good time up there. Even Leh seemed hectic in comparison when I came back down again!


I've put some photos in the India Wildlife gallery. They're not great - something to do with the atmosphere or the cold, I don't know, but many of my photos didn't come out the way I hoped. A lot of them are crops too, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

 

thanks. I was unsure about the use of "likes" (e.g. younger people using it for popularity contests) but they are actually quite useful for when people want to acknowledge a post without actually posting a reply to it.

I'd quite like to revisit all (or most) of the places I've been to as well...



The few year birds and mammals from Ladakh are listed here: 2016 Big Year


Off to Sri Lanka soon (or, at least, off to catch a flight to Mumbai which will eventually get me to Sri Lanka tomorrow morning).

 

And now I'm in Sri Lanka. And I have just discovered it is the middle of the rainy season here...

To recap the situation: the Indian government, in its infinite wisdom, decided to render all its 500 and 1000 rupee notes worthless, with four days notice. The move is meant to combat counterfeit money, because apparently most fake money is made in those denominations. A moment's thought will therefore tell you that those are also the most commonly-used notes. I'm sure there are better ways to deal with crime than crippling your own country's economy, but they probably know what they're doing. Before carrying through with this ingenious plan they did (not!) perform all the necessary steps to ensure a smooth transition, like ensuring there was any way at all for people to get cash for little things like living. Hence there was widespread panic, ATMs became useless because there was no money, and people were storming banks to get the old money changed into different denominations (and I mean storming - hundreds of people outside every bank, fights, riots, people literally dying in the lines from heat stroke and heart attacks). Initially the government said the ATMs would be operational again by Friday (three days after the demonetisation) but that quickly changed to two to three weeks.

Tourists were abandoning India in droves. There was no way for any of them to get money, unless they already had enough in their wallets to cover the next few weeks (which I didn't). I got my e-visa for Sri Lanka and booked a flight with SpiceJet: Delhi to Chennai to Colombo. In a month's time I will be back in India and hopefully the situation will be manageable by then (if not, I'm screwed again!).

The only major annoying thing about changing to Sri Lanka mid-stream is that I was planning on going to Dalhousie in Himachal Pradesh to look for the Chamba sacred langur. Dalhousie is in the foothills on the Himalayas, and it'll be winter, so I still need my cold-weather clothes for it. I even had a train ticket already booked for the 14th which cost me NZ$24 and which I had to abandon. I do want to still go to Dalhousie later when I return to India but that means I have to be lugging all these winter clothes around with me for the next couple of months in the tropics (I had just been going to ditch them all after leaving Dalhousie).

SpiceJet leaves from the T1 airport in Delhi. You can get to this on the airport Metro line same as the T3 airport, but just get off the stop before T3 and then there's a shuttle the rest of the way. I was sent an email from the airline to arrive an hour earlier than normal due to congestion at the airports. SpiceJet have this weird "safety" measure where you're not allowed to have batteries in your checked-luggage, even simple AA batteries. You have to put them in your hand-luggage instead. This is the exact opposite of every other airline I've flown with, and sort of makes a mockery of the "safety" aspect.

It's three hours between Delhi and Chennai, and it was not too comfortable. SpiceJet seats are tiny; I can barely fit my legs in. If the person in front tilts their seat back it just about hits you in the chest. Air Asia is also a budget airline but even they have more room than SpiceJet. I had plenty of time to muse on airline matters on the flight and I decided that as much as I am a fan of Air Asia, if there was a gang-fight between the cabin crew of these two airlines then SpiceJet would win. Indian men are bigger than Malaysian men for a start, although the Malaysians would probably have better martial arts so it might even out. The Air Asia air hostesses are much hotter but I figure the SpiceJet air hostesses would fight dirty. They would be used to fighting over scraps of food in the street, and they'd probably bring rabid macaques with them. So if it came down to it, I'd have to bet on SpiceJet.

I couldn't see much of Chennai as we landed (I didn't have a window) but what I saw looked green and inviting, unlike Delhi which is blanketed by smog and looks like it is in the midst of a permanent bush-fire. I had checked in Delhi that my bag would go straight through to Colombo without me having to collect it in Chennai, and I checked again in Chennai just to be sure. I wasn't overly satisfied with their assurances, but I'd see when I got there. There was a seven hour lay-over in Chennai (landing just after 5pm and leaving at midnight). The domestic arrivals hall was filled with shops and food outlets, so surely the international departures would have even more choices. I took the free shuttle between the two halls. The guard outside the doors said that once my boarding pass was checked and I went into the departures building I couldn't come out again. I figured that was fine - I had my boarding pass already, after all (issued in Delhi along with the Delhi to Chennai boarding pass), so I could just go through immigration and sit in the lounge, find some food, it'd be sweet. I went in. There was nothing in there. The SpiceJet flight wasn't registering on the departures board, no desks were open, there were just a couple of coffee outlets. I went to the immigration entrance and wasn't allowed through. Apparently I had to get my boarding pass checked at the desk first - even though it was, you know, a boarding pass. When did the desk open? Seven o'clock. So, about an hour and a half away. There were other tourists wandering around, as confused as I was by this idiotic airport. I went down to the desks and asked someone. Counter number one, I was told, opens at 9pm. There was nothing to do but sit and bat away malaria mosquitoes. Not even any WI-FI because you need a phone to access it (ridiculously, you have to enter a phone number and they send you a code by text to access the airport internet). Desk number one opened about 6.30pm but it was for Emirates. Nobody could check in for SpiceJet until 10pm, apparently. I had 110 rupees in my pocket, the last of my money. I bought a walnut brownie at one of the coffee places for 100 rupees.

Just before 9pm someone in a SpiceJet tshirt appeared at the desk. A swarm of tourists had recently turned up and parked ten baggage trolleys near the check-in line. I wasn't going to be stuck behind them when I already had my boarding pass, so I swooped in before they realised the desk was manned. "Oh, you have a boarding pass already," he says, "you could have just gone straight through immigration when you arrived." Grrr. I waved over the other guys who had been on my flight from Delhi and they were as unimpressed as I was. Nevertheless we all got through. The departure lounge through immigration had just as many, possibly more, mosquitoes than the previous location; and there was a food court (well, it only had one outlet but it was called a food court).

At 1.40am the next morning I was in Sri Lanka.

Internet turns out to be remarkably unreliable here so there may not be many updates for the next month. Also, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of budget accommodation anywhere, which is a bit of a worry. But, in good news, Sri Lanka, once one of the world's most malarial countries, was declared malaria-free in September by the World Health Organisation. So no dying for me for the next month!

 

interesting. All I know is my experience. There is only one time I have been required to put all my batteries in my hand-luggage. I think it was also a SpiceJet flight but I'm not sure (I checked the 2013-14 travel thread but I couldn't see it in the Assam part). Anyway, I had to put all the batteries in my hand-luggage, so for my next flight (with a different airline, probably Air Asia) I did the same and I wasn't allowed them through. My main bag was already checked and dispatched, so I had to wrap all the batteries in cardboard and tape it all up, then put the parcel through as checked-baggage. And until now I've never had to take them out of my checked-baggage.

What about this thing SpiceJet do - anyone encountered this? If you book your flight online with an international card, you have to produce the exact same card at the airport. If you can't then you don't fly. Would make it tricky if someone else had booked the flight for you!

 

you will be pleased to hear that I saw elephants on my second day in Sri Lanka, and a couple of days later I had the thread's first David Brown Shoe Fauna Alert.

I haven't totalled things properly (so a rough count) but I think I'm on about a hundred-odd birds for Sri Lanka after five days, about half of which are year-birds, and I'm guessing around half of those are life-birds. I think I've seen about ten mammal species so far.