Wednesday 20 April 2016

We start the day with a bike ride into a market area and start walking. We’re visiting a community forest with one of Krishna’s uncles. He is a guardian of the forest and he’s taking us to a special tree within the forest that is host to many colonies of native honey bees. The community forest was established by the local people to manage the harvesting of a popular timber tree. They realized that if they kept harvesting this tree at the rate they were, there would be none left. So they took matters into their own hands. It’s a great initiative by the people themselves. There is no government here being so far from Kathmandu.

Our walk starts with a brief stop at a huge Bombax cieber tree. These beautiful trees are everywhere and they are huge. I know then we’ll because they are my favorite tree back in Australia. There is a colony of native bees in this tree so Dipak is very interested. The walk continues for about two kilometers into the forest. It’s hot and dry but. We eventually come to a tall tree on the side of an escarpment and it it are about 60 different colonies of bees. It’s amazing! Dipak is very excited. These bees are bigger than the European honey bee and are untamed, aggressive. They are very high up so it’s unlikely we are under and threat from them. We photograph and take measurements, and collect dead or dying bees from the ground.

There are supposed to be leopards in this forest, which I’m excited by but of course we don’t see any. They are rare and this is the wrong time of the day anyway. We do see some monkeys.

We walk back to the village a different way that takes us along the Makhale River. It’s a wise shallow river that doesn’t have much water in it. India has famed it further up and taken the water for its own hydro power, which it the sells to Nepal, despite the water coming from Nepal! There is an old bridge there built by the British during their occupation of India but it’s only capable of light traffic now because of weakness in its structure. This is the border. 

There are wetlands here. There is plent of water underground so the communities have plenty of good quality water for drinking and irrigation. It’s easily accessible being seven meters underground.

We drop down into the village for lunch at a cafe run by one of krishna’s cousins. On the bikes again, this time to have a look at the longest suspension bridge in Southern Asia. It spans the Makhale River and was built by the Swiss. It’s spectacular and is designed for bikes and walker onlys, not vehicles. It’s very impressive. We witnessed a bike carrying two people and two goats.  It’s getting late but Krishna wants to take us to see some Asian elephants. These elephants are kept for doing work in the forests and carry tourists around when there are some. Elephants are special animals. They are being looked after by a bunch of young guys who are their trainers and drivers.