The remote and poorly accessible Kedarnath, Badarinath and other ancient shrines located high up in the Garhwal Himalaya are some of Hinduism’s holiest pilgrimage sites. Religious tourism offers some employment opportunities for people living in the region – as porters, horsemen, and workers in the small restaurants and hotels that spring up seasonally to accommodate a large number of pilgrims. The climbers and tourists who visit the region for its spectacular panoramic views of the peaks such as Kamet, Chaukhamba, Bandar Poonch and Nanda Devi have also been a source of income for the local people in the Garhwal and Kumaon regions. Gyan Singh belonged to Ransi, a small village in the Rudraprayag District of Garhwal. He was a shepherd most of his life and had, as a result, an in-depth knowledge of the valleys and wildlife in the region. Although his patch of land and livestock provided him with a source of livelihood, he supplemented his income as a porter based at Gaurikund, the hamlet at the beginning of the Kedarnath trail. During summer, when the trail to the temple was snow-free, the large numbers of devotees visiting the shrine were willing to pay considerable amounts of money to men who carried them or their luggage. Wooden palanquins borne by porters are still a popular mode of transport for pilgrims unable to trek in the tough mountain terrain.

Our association with Gyan Singh started in 1996 when we began our field surveys with the Wildlife Institute of India in Kedarnath Musk Deer Sanctuary. Our project aimed to identify potential areas for conserving biological diversity in the Western Himalaya and the trans-Himalaya. Kedarnath, on account of its wide variety of habitat types, remoteness and large elevational extent was an ideal site for detailed explorations on species diversity patterns which formed the focus of the study. After one of our initial surveys to the area surrounding the Madhyamaheshwar temple, we camped at the inspection bungalow at Akhtauli near Ransi. Although there were a number of porters who were familiar with the temple trails, our search for men who knew the surrounding wildlife sanctuary and who were willing to risk a trek out to the higher valleys in late autumn and unpredictable weather had few takes from villages near the road ahead. Finally, with the help of a forest guard (Ganga Singh) and field assistant Kalyan Singh Bisht (an article about his brother Vikram Singh Bisht by Suresh Kumar, appears in this issue) we were introduced to Gyan Singh and Trilok Singh from Ransi. This team guided us in our surveys through the valleys of Dhauli, Mandani and Kham. Thus began a close association which lasted over five years.

In spite of his taciturn nature and a curious disability (a part of one foot was chewed off during a tussle with a Himalayan black bear which raided his shed, and the other was affected by filariasis), Gyan Singh became the backbone of all field surveys. Stoic and unflappable, his knowledge of trails, campsites, and odeyars (large rock overhangs where one could take shelter or tents could be pitched) was phenomenal as was his adeptness at spotting wildlife, predicting the weather and finding running water when everything around was frozen or dry. However, what truly set him apart from the younger men was his uncanny ability to casually chart out courses where no paths existed and in places where he had never been before.
He also knew most of the shepherds who camped in the region, and this often helped us in establishing better associations with them.

What he did not like was the drudgery and monotony of laying vegetation plots and during the time we spent counting plants, he would make himself useful by looking for indirect evidence of wildlife within the plots or collecting edible ferns. While sampling in the alpine meadows he was particularly prone to abandon work and disappear looking for chaura (Angelica sp.) which is a prized flavouring agent. This shortcoming we were willing to forgive since the dinner he prepared would be sumptuous. At the same time, his long years as a shepherd meant that his knowledge of the vernacular names and local uses of plants was considerable and on several occasions, he was responsible for resolving issues related to species identification. His self-confessed fondness for wild meat (he curbed his appetites during this period) was also instrumental in our sightings of the endangered chir pheasant (Catreus wallichi) as well as in various wildlife sightings ranging from leopards and musk deer to lammergeiers and numerous rare birds. To make up for his own illiteracy and lack of enthusiasm for data collection, he introduced us to two young men from his village – Umed Singh and Birender Singh. These two quick learners, along with Kalyan Singh, helped us establish and maintain over five hundred vegetation and bird plots and numerous quadrats along the considerable sampling gradient which ranged from over 1200 metres in the subtropical zone to alpine meadows and scrub which occurred above 4000 metres.

Since bird diversity was to be sampled during different seasons, this meant marking and maintaining the plots at regular intervals to enable revisits.
While the field surveys involved walking from dawn to dusk on most days and the sampling entailed very hard work in the plots on a similar schedule, the added responsibility of cooking, carrying provisions, shifting and establishing camp frequently meant that on most days there was hardly a break for the men. Additional responsibilities included striking bargains for old sheep with neighbouring shepherds when provisions ran low, returning runaway Bhutia dogs (Tibetan mastiffs accompanying local shepherds) to their rightful owners, building makeshift bridges across torrential streams and rescuing researchers who fell in (we later found that the undisturbed slopes that we were seeking for sampling remained undisturbed for a reason) and nursing others from periodic bouts of high altitude sickness and giardiasis. On the odd occasion when sampling was concluded early or we had an off day at the base camp, cricket was the preferred form of sport and entertainment. The team also included our driver Jagdish who was good at the game and took it upon himself to train the rest. However, all this was contingent on the availability of level ground and often we resorted to idleness which was most enjoyable. While the younger men were quick to pick up the game, Gyan Singh struggled to keep up and found it difficult to bowl even once without falling down at the end of his run-up. However, his ability to keep wickets and his late-blooming batting skills earned him some points and he was christened Ian Healy (after the Queensland cricketer) by Jagdish and some of the children from nearby cattle camps.

For a team of individuals who started work unaccustomed to data collection or long spells away from their families, they showed remarkable commitment and enthusiasm and it was soon clear that they were motivated by much more than the modest salaries they received. In fact, most of these men could get by without regular employment as they owned land and livestock. By the end of the project period, Umed Singh could correctly identify most woody plant species in the study area by both local as well as Latin names, while Birender could visually estimate the girths of trees to the nearest 10 cm or so. As the project neared completion, we explored options to establish a long-term monitoring research programme that would also provide a source of employment to the team, but the costs were prohibitive and as students our options to raise money were limited. Umed Singh went on to work on a similar project with Rashid Raza in Askot Wildlife Sanctuary while Gyan Singh and Birender Singh stayed back in their village at Ransi. Kalyan Singh, who was the youngest member of the team married a girl from a village near Ransi and fulfilled his long-held dream of starting a provision shop in Ghat, his remote and inaccessible village in Chamoli District.

To conclude, we share the same sentiment as the other contributors to this special section. While most of us have been happy to acknowledge the contributions of individuals and certain communities, we feel it is time to develop formal institutional norms for developing long-term partnerships that benefit both researchers and field assistants. In addition to basic commitments such as steady incomes and insurance, it is also important to provide recognition on institutional websites and conservation related publications. Field assistants and informers also play a critical role as vital links between their own communities and researchers, often creating opportunities for furthering mutually beneficial partnerships.

Meera Anna Oommen (along with Rashid H. Raza) worked with the Wildlife Institute of India on a project that aimed to identify potential areas for conservation of biodiversity in the Indian Himalaya. The field surveys for this project were conducted in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir and the Garhwal Himalaya in Uttaranchal. Gyan Singh, Umed Singh, Birender Singh and Kalyan Singh were members of the team in Kedarnath Musk Deer Sanctuary in Uttaranchal where extensive field studies were conducted.

A Brief History

Sometime in the early 1900s, a German fancy leather trader came to India to look for snake skins. We may never know how he found out about the hunting prowess of the Irulas of Chengalpattu District but he very quickly organised what was to become one of the largest snake slaughters the world has ever known. Using middlemen, often Muslim livestock hide dealers, our German friend started a trade that eventually snowballed into the killing of over 10 million cobras, rat snakes, pythons and Russell’s vipers per year.

And then it wasn’t just the Irulas – soon tribal hunters all over the country got into the act, but none had the finesse and expertise of the Irulas.

The trade was out of control and probably not sustainable for long. Luckily the combination of local and international outcry killed the bulk of the snakeskin industry with the ban on exports in 1976, but that put about 5000 Irulas out of a job and hard times followed. In 1978, with 12 Irula friends, I registered for a Cooperative Society for Snake Catchers. This was to let the Irulas continue to catch snakes, but only for the venom and then the snakes had to be released.

How they do it

I first met the Irulas in 1969 when I was on a snake collection trip to Madras for Haffkine Institute, then the biggest producer of antivenom serum. The late photojournalist, Harry Miller had written about the snake hunting art of the Irulas in the Indian Express and he introduced me to Arjun, who blew my mind with his casual skill. From that moment on I had found my peer group – I instantly like their reserved, calm attitude and deeply admired their vast store of wild knowledge. Over the next 34 years, I went on innumerable snake hunts and learned much.

One of the first bits of Irula “magic” they taught me was how to recognise the alarm cry of the babblers, mynahs and palm squirrels when they spot a snake. Very useful, especially after the rains make the bushes dense and snakes are hard to see. I learned how to collect “stick honey” from the small bees that harvest flower nectar every April and how to eat live termites without getting my lips and tongue bitten. Next, they tried to teach me how to find snakes by their tracks but decades later, I’m still a rank novice. In a harsh, hot land like India many snakes spend a good part of their lives underground – either hunting, eating and digesting rats or just tiding over the burning daylight hours. The Irulas specialise in finding the rat holes, termite mounds and other places snakes stay in, and that is like real magic.

An average snake hunt

Last July my partner Janaki and I went snake hunting with Kali, a longtime Irula friend. He was catching the “Big Four” venomous snakes: cobra, krait, Russell’s viper and saw-scaled viper for venom extraction. We started with the cobra and headed straight to the boundary of a rice field where mole rat (Bandicoota bengalensis) burrows abounded. Scarcely noticing crab holes and rat holes with rat tracks or fresh diggings, Kali homed in on one with a slight smoothness, a shiny bit of compressed dry earth on the bottom edge.

He peered in, dug a few licks with his short crowbar and showed us a very obvious snake track impressed on the softer earth deeper down. No root system to hamper work, Kali dug a wide access into the hole swiftly and carefully. Careful so not to cut the snake. After digging a while, occasionally peering in, Kali takes a thin, springy, green stick and gently pushes it into the hole about a foot. The stick mysteriously pushes back out an inch. Kali smiles and pushes his elbow to mimic the snake’s coil as it pushes against the stick. Now he knows he can safely dig a foot more without harming the snake. In a few short moments, the cobra is visible; it’s obviously a female because she’s with her 20 or so eggs! She is carefully removed and bagged; the eggs are collected for incubation back at the Irula venom centre.

Over the next few days, our Irula pals took us first to Russell’s viper territory, dense hedgerows of spiny Agave plants and we pulled out two adult and six baby Russell’s (the babies for release in a safe place). Then we went after kraits, the clues this time being a shed skin and a fresh scat. Digging out this elusive snake of the night was more difficult – the large male had found a hole in the root system of a neem tree. But again, no problem for the Irulas; finding the last of the Big Four venomous snakes of India was a snap. We spent the morning peering down into the rough bark of palmyra trees and found several of the tiny but dangerous vipers tightly coiled and well hidden. Again, the Irulas knew where to look: according to the species and the season.

When my son Nikhil and I wrote up the rough data of the 5 day hunt for a scientific note we found that we had slowly and carefully hunted about 3 km per day and caught a total of 55 snakes, including a bunch of rat snakes, water snakes, striped keelbacks and sand boas just to measure and release. We also recorded 158 shed skins of 11 species of snakes and started formulating ideas of how to use shed skins to study status and distribution. After all, it’s quite easy to identify a snake from the shed skin.

But the Irula knowledge goes far beyond the world of serpents. Being big consumers of the tasty field rats that abound in our rice fields, the Irulas have worked out rat finding and capture techniques that puts pussycats to shame. A hunter-gatherer can’t waste precious time and energy digging up a vacant burrow by small signs like tracks, dung, fresh digging and even the presence of rat lice. They are so good at rat catching that the Government of India’s Department of Science and Technology gave the Irula Cooperative a grant of Rs. 10 lakhs to do a pilot project of rodent control by direct capture.

During the 20-month period, the Irulas captured over 400,000 rats, probably saving at least 12 tonnes of grain and other crops, without using a drop of a deadly pesticide. Unfortunately, the project was never taken to its logical conclusion: make rodent control in India a labour intensive operation that would employ lakhs of tribal people. As usual, the big industries (the pesticide producer) run the show and the Government bows to big bucks, never mind how dangerous and ineffective these rodenticides really are.

The Irula Cooperative is one of the most financially successful cooperatives in India, but it would be wonderful to see the Irulas’ other talents being fully utilised for the good of the country and to make a living for them too.

Rodent control, crocodile farming, technical assistance to field biologists are just some of the many things the Irulas are expert at. The Coop’s sister organisation, the Irula Tribal Women’s Welfare Society, has helped Irula women get recognition as herbal and the tree planting experts. They have planted lakhs of trees since they started in 1986 and the future looks a lot brighter for these great people described in recent Government texts as ‘most primitive’ and as having the lowest per capita income in the country.

The Irula literacy rate is dismally low and few of their kids finish more than a couple of years of school. On the other hand, their knowledge of nature far surpasses most college graduates or even professors – now that’s food for thought!

This brief introduction to the field people I admire most in India would not be complete without mentioning the two non-Irulas who act as the catalysts in the success of the Irula Snake Catchers’ Cooperative and the Irula Women’s’ Society: S. Dravidamani and K. Krishnan. 

I first visited the mass nesting beaches of olive ridley turtles in Gahirmatha, Orissa in 1997. We were a large group of international participants in a sea turtle workshop in Bhubaneshwar. We were hosted for two days by Bivash Pandav, a young sea turtle biologist with the Wildlife Institute of India. On Babu Bali or Long Wheeler Island, Bivash had his field camp with a team of dedicated field assistant, boatman and cook. Two years later, I returned as a post-doctoral fellow with the Wildlife Institute of India, to initiate a project on sea turtle genetics, and spent several weeks at the camp. This time, I got to know the team a lot better. There was Madhu, the cook, and majordomo of the camp. The boatman (Subash) and the rest of the team (Kalia, Siria and Sahadev) were proficient ‘turtle fishers’. Bivash wanted to work on mating pairs, and they had devised a triangular net with which they scooped the mating turtles out of the water. In three years, they tagged nearly 1700 mating pairs from the offshore waters of Gahirmatha. They also tagged several thousand turtles on the nesting beach. Without his dedicated band of followers, little would have been possible.

Later that season, I visited Bivash’s camp at the Devi river mouth. There, a young schoolboy named Bichitrananda Biswal (Bichi) was trying to impress upon Bivash his interest in sea turtle conservation. Along with Tuku, Tulu and Bishnu, Bichi kept track of the dead turtles that were getting washed ashore the Devi coast in large numbers and helped Bivash in tagging turtles during an arribada that took place near the Devi river mouth in March 1997. After working at his camp for three seasons, Bichi kept his interest in turtles alive, working for Operation Kachhapa and the Forest Department. Eventually, he would start his own NGO, Sea Turtle Action Programme (STAP). Today, STAP is a part of collective sea turtle conservation projects in Orissa, and Bichi an active participant. Turtles still continue to die in large numbers along the coast of the Devi river, and Bichi still continues to keep track of them, keeping the issue alive.

Further south, a similar band of turtle followers were initiated into tagging and counting rituals at Rushikulya. This mass nesting beach was only discovered in 1994, during one of Bivash’s surveys of the Orissa coast. Rabindranath Sahu was the fiery leader of this group. After working for Bivash, some of the boys worked briefly for Operation Kachhapa. During the mid-2000s, they assisted Basudev Tripathy with his fieldwork for his PhD and in turn, Basu helped them get a grant to build an interpretation centre and start their group, the Rushikulya Sea Turtle Protection Committee (RSTPC).

One of the major problems in Rushikulya is light pollution from a nearby highway, aquaculture farms and a chemical factory. Each year, when hatchlings emerged after mass nesting (millions at a time), most would be disoriented and end up in the vegetation behind the beach. Rescue missions were organised involving local volunteers, but hundreds of thousands of hatchlings still died, and even those that were rescued were probably weakened, soon to be devoured. While the biologists – Jack Frazier and Bivash amongst others – posed the idea of a barrier, and suggested the use of empty cement bags, one of the members of the group, Damburu, then came up with the idea of using a fence made of fishing nets, behind the mass nesting area. With funding from WWF and other agencies, for years, this barrier served to prevent hatchlings from straying away from the beach and getting killed. Today, members of the RSTPC run the interpretation centre at Rushikulya, participate in state conservation activities, spread awareness in local schools and assist researchers who work on sea turtle biology at the site, in addition to their own ongoing monitoring.

Many of them continue to work on research projects as field assistants. Ganapati helped Divya with her Masters dissertation and continues to work on our projects. Suresh, who is the latest to conduct Doctoral research on ridleys in Orissa, has a dedicated group of field assistants, including Damburu, Shanker, Surendra, Madhu and Kedar. His boatman, Sri Ramalu, has now worked for several years in turtle projects. Despite being hearing and speech impaired, he is gifted with an acute sense of sight and does not miss even a single surfacing turtle in the featureless seascape. His ability to get the boat through the river mouths where the breakers come crashing down, and manoeuvring through rough seas nonstop for six to seven hours are invaluable. Without his enthusiasm, hard work and skills, all the offshore studies would be much the poorer.

For all those who helped with sea turtle projects along the Orissa coast over the years, the projects have been a significant source of income even though the activity is only seasonal. With fish catch declining over the years, many other local fishermen now eagerly look forward to working in turtle projects. Some of them even want to work without pay in order to gain experience so as to get included in the future.

From retired residents on the coast of North Carolina, to indigenous communities in the Torres Strait, sea turtles have attracted an incredible variety of dedicated conservationists and volunteers across the world. In India, students, fishing communities and animal activists have all become involved in sea turtle conservation across the coast, some for more than twenty years. The groups in Orissa had a different origin, working as field assistants in sea turtle research projects. They have helped with three Doctoral (Bivash, Basu, Suresh), several Masters dissertations (Karthik Ram, Basu, Divya, Murali) and several research and conservation projects.

Together, the projects have involved the monitoring of nesting beaches, offshore distributions, arribada census, hatching success, tagging, genetics, and satellite telemetry, covering a fair range of research that is carried out on sea turtles. And now, these field assistants turned conservationists have a significant role to play in the conservation of these animals and their coastal and marine habitats, not just in Orissa, but across India.

As a daily wage labourer with the General Reserve Engineer Force (GREF), Mathe Budda came to the island of Great Nicobar over three decades ago. Hailing from a village in Ranchi, he was one of the many young people from the northern state of Bihar who were employed by this organisation whose main task was to build roads in inhospitable terrain and new frontiers that were being opened up. The road which was constructed between Kopen Heat on the west coast and Campbell Bay, the main settlement on the east coast came to be known as the East-West Road. After the completion of the road, the GREF moved on, but Mathe stayed back as did a few of his compatriots in different parts of the island. Not much is known about him except that he eventually settled down in the picturesque little coastal hamlet of Kopen Heat. Since the road had ceased to be motorable due to landslides (and was non-existent in many places), he had little contact with anyone other than the members of a small Nicobari family settled nearby, labourers from the forest department who visited infrequently, and fishermen who pitched camp on the odd occasion. Despite his old age and partial blindness, he tended a little coconut grove which provided him with the raw material to brew considerable amounts of toddy which he bartered for provisions. To the occasional researcher who visited his little hamlet, the budda (old man) played the perfect host, preparing meals, showing off his toddy tapping skills (though old, blind and bowlegged he was very agile and could climb coconut trees very well) and recounting encounters of previous visitors. The fact that he recollected and recounted in vivid detail, the visits (and often embarrassing accounts) of the dozen or so research personnel who visited him in as many years, was a source of amusement to all who happened to partake of his hospitality. He was particularly keen to recount the story of a well respected and very senior lady researcher who arrived at Kopen Heat to research indigenous seafaring craft only to fall off one of the hodis (country boats) into the sea and her subsequent rescue.

Kopen Heat though sheltered from the sea (lagoon was well known for the stillness of its water and the beautiful view of corals), was destroyed by the tsunami which followed the earthquake off Sumatra in 2004. Most of the settlements on the west coast of Great Nicobar (and its few hundred inhabitants) were wiped out and there were only a few survivors. Unfortunately, Mathe Budda was not among the handful of people who survived, but memories of his warmth and hospitality remain with those of us whose lives he touched.

Although a part of the Republic of India, the Nicobar Islands are closer to the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The River Galathea drains into the sea in a large cove called South Bay on the southern tip of the Great Nicobar Island. The beach at the river mouth was a significant nesting site for leatherback sea turtles and this was where the Andaman and Nicobar Islands’ Environmental Team (ANET) ran a research project since the year 2000. Since the research camp lay 41 km along the main trunk road that led south out of the shantytown of Campbell Bay, it was called Point 41.

In December 2004, the leatherback nesting season was at its peak and a quiet, shy, young wildlife biologist from Orissa, Dr Ambika Tripathy, was studying them. This was his first visit to the Nicobars, a long-awaited opportunity. His assistant was Saw Agu, a young Karen (a tribe originally from Burma settled in the Andaman Islands by the British in 1925), with several years of experience on the sea turtle project. The camp also included visitors from Pune – four middle-aged amateur ornithologists, and two guards from the Andaman and Nicobar Forest Department – Sameer and Abdul Aziz.

After dinner on Christmas day, Ambika and Agu left the camp to walk the long stretch of beach, recording data on nesting turtles, returning exhausted just before sunrise. They were deep in slumber when a tremendous shaking jolted them awake.

The Andaman and Nicobar Islands lie on a fault line and earthquakes are common. But this was a big one! Sprinting to the beach, they found their guests and the forest guards watching the sea receding into an abnormally low tide. Just as quickly, the tide rushed into camp, scattering their things on the flooded beach. Meanwhile, it continued to quake and it was difficult for any of them to stand upright. The sea ebbed again leaving fish flopping on the shore. Sensing that the worst was yet to come, Agu pointed to the hills and shouted ‘Bhago!’ (run). Instead of heeding his warning, the four naturalists from Pune began to photograph the scene, while the two guards rushed around collecting their dispersed belongings, including precious certificates of achievement. Only Ambika took Agu seriously but compelled to play the host, he waited for the older men, wasting valuable time.

The tremors continued and the sea ebbed and surged in small bursts. When the waves started to engulf the land they stood on, the group finally decided to move. As they approached the road, the nearest high ground, the sea was surging ashore with greater intensity and they witnessed the forest check-post being washed away.

However, by the time they reached the road, it had gone underwater too. There was water as far as the eye could see. The only thing that stood above the water was the bridge that spanned the River Galathea. But when they got to the bridge, it was already under thigh-deep water that was rising rapidly. Running to the hills in the distance was not an option anymore, as they would never make it in time. The only thing they could do was to climb a large pipul (Ficus religiosa) tree nearby. Agu and the guards assisted the naturalists in getting above the reach of the waves, before climbing up to “safety” themselves.

Sitting nervously on the tree, Agu recalls the sound of the tsunami as it approached. It began with an enormous roar, accompanied by the sound of branches snapping and trees falling. That’s when Agu saw the huge phalanx of dark water, perhaps 15 m high, effortlessly crashing down giant coastal trees in its path and coming straight at them with the force of a celestial sledgehammer. That was the last time Agu saw his companions. The tsunami smashed the pipul tree like a matchstick and sucked Agu underwater, knocking his breath out and tangling his legs amongst tree branches. As he gasped for air and struggled to free himself, he snorted and swallowed mouthfuls of the dark, smelly water. When he managed to surface, he found himself bobbing amidst huge uprooted trees. The land was far in the distance. Before he could gain his bearings the next wave pulled him underwater again. The force of the tide whipped away his shorts leaving him totally naked. The waves walloped him against the trunks of huge uprooted trees and other debris and every part of him took a beating. He felt like a rag doll being tossed by a malevolent force which he couldn’t escape. He ached all over and was scratched and scraped everywhere. Each time he went under, he gulped more of the filthy water. When he tried to haul himself up a standing tree, it gave way and fell right on him. His shoulders and chest hurt especially badly, and every breath he drew hurt even more. There seemed no end to the fury of the sea.

Agu struggled to stay afloat through the turbulence until he was finally able to climb onto a floating tree. The battering had left him totally drained, but concern for others was uppermost in his mind. He scoured the watery landscape and shouted for the others; there was no response. The waves and the pain had wrung him of all energy. Seeing the camp underwater, it seemed unlikely anyone had survived that destruction. Eventually, the fury abated; it was eerily quiet except for the harsh sound of rough waves crashing on fallen trees, pushing flotsam and Agu towards land. There wasn’t a whimper of life anywhere, not even birds. The bridge across the Galathea had disappeared; only its columns rose above the water. Trees shorn of leaves stood naked against the sky. Agu was disoriented – the coast as he knew it was missing and the rainforest seemed to rise out of the sea – but he realized that the raft of the fallen tree he was sitting on had once been part of a lowland tropical forest next to a large mangrove creek, the Galathea River. He pondered his next move. The forest was too far in the distance – he didn’t think his fractured, bruised and aching body could get him there. There were no fishing boats at sea. He was all alone on that long trashed coastline, with no sign of any help coming his way. He wondered if any of his friends from Chingenh, the nearest Nicobarese village, would remember to look for him, or if indeed any of them had survived.

Helplessness washed over him. He knew he had to get back on land, but how? He told himself that he would wait, rest and recover his strength. After nightfall, it began to rain leaving him cold, tired, hungry and aching, but sleep was not an option. He felt compelled to maintain a vigil for any further developments.

The next day dawned and he was still bobbing in the middle of nowhere surrounded by rafts of logs and debris. The carcass of a turtle floated by and moments later a turtle swam past. These were the first creatures Agu saw in the immediate aftermath. Debris was piled up everywhere. There was no place to hide from the sun’s relentless heat. It made him thirsty and when he could stand it no more, he was driven to drinking the dirty, stinking seawater. He slept fitfully and woke up to the same nightmare.

Hours wore on into days. Helicopters and planes occasionally flew overhead but there was no way of alerting them. He had weakened from lack of water and food. Small sips of seawater were all he had. One moonlit night he saw a saltwater crocodile swim close to his pile of logs, and circle it. He looked around for something to fend it off in case it came close, but mercifully it swam away. He could see other crocodiles circling the debris of the mangrove forest that had once been their home. Sand flies bit him during the day and mosquitoes made the nights miserable. The crocodiles and the insects were the only signs of life. He had no idea what had happened to the people in the surrounding villages or just how massive the devastation was.

Rain brought relief from the heat and he gulped it eagerly, but the cooler temperatures that followed froze him at night. He kept count of the days; a week had already gone by. He lost consciousness frequently from dehydration and exhaustion. On the tenth day he tried swimming to another raft of logs closer to land, but when his aching body protested, he abandoned the effort.

The helicopters stopped flying past and Agu suffered a crisis of hope. Then one day, a water monitor lizard visited him and smelt his feet with its long forked tongue; Agu realized with a start that it was checking if he was carrion. He knew that he if he wanted to live he would have to go ashore, or become lizard food and die there. He was determined to live even if the effort killed him. He had regained his bearings to some degree and remembered that there was a forest trail that led to a village called Shastri Nagar 35 km away. He picked a small branch to support his badly wounded arm and swam over to the next logjam and rested. The pain was excruciating and every movement was time-consuming. He stumbled on the branches and slipped on the smooth trunks but he kept going. The effort knocked him unconscious a lot of times, and it took him several hours to crawl ashore.

The shore was no longer the beautiful beach he remembered. It was unrecognisable – clogged with huge uprooted trees, lianas, broken branches, and slush. Climbing over this debris was going to be difficult, so he decided to make his way through the forest along a hilly slope. He was delighted to find the stream still flowing and drank his fill of fresh water for the first time in thirteen days. When he stepped on an old areca nut he couldn’t resist the temptation to chew on it. There was nothing else around that seemed edible. On seeing a skull, he shivered but realized it was old and had probably been unearthed by the waves. It was less than seven km to Shastri Nagar but it took him three days of hobbling and crawling to get there.

On January 11, 2005, Agu staggered into the village. It had been sixteen days since the tsunami. He couldn’t see a soul around, but household wreckage – tin roofs, mangled furniture, window frames, clothes, and utensils – lay scattered everywhere. He stared, trying to comprehend the devastation; he knew some of the villagers and wondered what had become of them. He put on a pair of green trousers and a white shirt that he found lying on the ground. As he picked his way agonizingly and gingerly through the mess he heard a shout. It was Sriram – it was a strange relief to hear that familiar voice. Sriram was a villager, who had returned with a few others to collect some of their belongings.

Sriram narrated the terrible tale of the devastation that had been caused in just a few hours on that sunlit but fateful day. Sriram took Agu to an old couple who had stayed on after the tsunami. During his years working at the research camp, Agu had seen the couple going about the village and recognised them; they, however, couldn’t identify him – sixteen days of being ravaged by the sun, rain and sea had taken their toll. The old lady fed him his first meal since the tsunami. That was when they heard a helicopter flying low overhead and Sriram ran out to wave it down.

By an extraordinary coincidence, a search party from ANET had received permission just that day to conduct a search for the members of their sea turtle research camp. As they flew in the Indian Navy helicopter surveying the damage below, they saw a few people gathered in an opening waving at them. The team requested to be dropped there and the villagers led them to Agu. There was shock and relief when they saw him sitting under the coconut trees of the desolate village. Before being whisked away to a hospital, Agu told the search party that he had not seen Ambika or the others since the tsunami, but he asked them not to give up hope. However, despite many searches over the following months, none of the other members of the ANET sea turtle research camp was ever found.

Agu was treated for his injuries and dehydration at Dhanvantri, the Naval hospital at Port Blair. He had broken both collarbones, fractured a few ribs and bruised his body very badly. After spending a few months with his family, recuperating at his home in Webi, North Andaman, Agu returned to work at ANET where he works even today.

It is a testament to his strength of will that Agu narrated this story with no sense of drama, but as if it were a tale of a long forgotten hero in a distant land. He is a source of courage to all of us.

On that fateful day, the sand at South Bay sank several metres, destroying the beach and the mangroves. The sea turtle camp lay about 125 km northwest of the epicentre of the 9.1 Richter earthquake of December 26, 2004, and about 150 km from totally devastated Aceh in Sumatra. Today there is a slow accretion of sand on the beach and soon ANET researchers will be able to determine if the leatherbacks will come back to nest here.

Ambika Tripathy’s contribution to sea turtle research in the Andamans and Nicobars will go a long way towards the conservation of sea turtles and enable future researchers to evaluate how the tsunami has affected the leatherback nesting grounds in the Nicobars.

There are innumerable references of the mountaineering skills and the physical strength of the Sherpas who are the backbone of many expeditions which aim to scale the mighty Himalayan peaks. While the Sherpas are reputedly the strongest of mountain people, there are many others who have endured the harshness of mountain life. Vikram Singh Bisht as the name suggests was no Sherpa, but a soft-spoken and mild-mannered Garhwali. He hailed from a small pastoral village high up in the Himalayas, in a remote corner of Chamoli district in the Indian state of Uttarakhand.

Though I knew Vikram only for a month, my association with him left a lasting impression on me. I first met Vikram in May 1996 when I was on a field trip to the Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary, as a student at the Wildlife Institute of India (WII). He was then employed as a field assistant with the WII for a research project on musk deer. He had previously worked on several other WII projects in Kedarnath and had earned himself a name as one of the best field workers in this region due to his dedication and hard work. During that trip, I got hooked to the beauty and the adventure associated with the Himalayan mountains. The highlight of that trip was the sighting of a male Himalayan monal, one of the most brightly coloured birds in the world and a denizen of the high alpine slopes. That incident left me with no second thoughts, and I decided to work on the winter habitat use of the Himalayan monal in Kedaranth for my Masters dissertation. Winters in Kedarnath can be harsh, with four months of sub-zero temperatures, frost and snow. For someone like me coming from tropical southern India who had never seen snow before, it was indeed reassuring to know that Vikram was there to assist me in the field.

In the last week of November 1996, with several bundles of warm clothing, I landed in Kedarnath to commence my work on the Monal. My work was mostly concentrated around the Tungnath temple (3400 m), which is an important pilgrimage site along the southern boundary of the Kedarnath WLS. Unlike summer, when this area was frequented by pilgrims and pastoral people, hardly anyone was to be seen in winter. The pilgrimage season was over for the year and the livestock herders had also moved down to warmer areas. Vikram and I set up camp at Shokharakh (3200 m) in a log hut, which sat on a cliff edge. This was surrounded by three other cliffs and the mountain slope which led up to the Chandrashila peak (3680 m), the highest point in this range of the Himalayas. Just behind the hut, flowed a small stream which came down from the peak. Villagers from nearby areas conducted last rites for departed souls of their kin along this stream. ‘Shokharakh’ literally translated to ‘camp of silence’ in the local dialect. The campsite indeed had a spiritual air to it.

We set up camp and soon began to crisscross the entire area to study where the monal occurred. We marked several trails and paths to monitor the presence of the monal. Vikram knew the area very well – he knew the elusive musk deer bedding sites, areas the black bears were active in, and what tubers monals dug for. He could also identify trees and other vegetation. Along the trails, Vikram marked the trees with a red paint and where necessary he would tie a red ribbon; these would be the only indication of the trail when the area was completely snowbound. Over the weeks Vikram and I worked closely to run the camp and do the fieldwork, for we were the only two people around. Vikram’s days were often longer than mine since he also attended to the bulk of camp duties. Most of our conversations revolved around his wild encounters, the mountain spirits, his village, his family and kids, but would invariably end with discussions about snowfall in the area. Our initial weeks at Shokharakh were a fight against time since there was heavy snow in the last week of December. Thereafter, regular snowfall occurred until the middle of April and the whole area would be covered with three to four feet of snow.

The last week of December had come and gone, and the weather appeared to be favourable with no signs of heavy snowfall in the near future. Taking advantage of this situation, Vikram and I decided to trek to the Chandrashila peak on the first day of the year 1997. En route to the peak, we stopped at the Tungnath temple and offered prayers. On my persuasion, Vikram had decided to give up his beedies as a New Year resolution. Soon we were atop the peak and the breathtaking panoramic view of the snow-clad peaks to the north left us spellbound. As a token of respect to the mountain, we made a cairn of few small stones there. Delighted at our small achievement, we quickly took pictures of each other and trekked back to camp.

The next few days were routine – we marked more trails and searched for signs of the monal. On the morning of January 4, I found that Vikram had woken up very early and was sitting in the kitchen staring at the fire in the hearth. I noticed a strange uneasy look on his face as if something was worrying him deeply. Upon enquiring what the matter was, he replied in an agitated tone that he would have to go home immediately and do some prayers and offerings as he was getting nightmares in the camp. Though I was surprised by his sudden outburst, I calmed him down and decided to move down to a lower camp, so Vikram could go home for a few days.

Later, on the way to the lower camp, we marked one last trail that was left to be completed. At one point along the trail where pilgrims regularly offered prayers to a set of stones neatly arranged on the ground, Vikram prayed for a long time. He removed the fallen leaves from there and painted the “om” sign on the rocks. He truly seemed worried. Later on the same day, he left for home, while I stayed behind in the lower camp.

A week passed but there was no sign of Vikram returning or the much-awaited snowfall. The next day a boy in his teens, Prem Singh, arrived at camp saying he was Vikram’s brother. He had been sent by his brother saying he was worried that I would be having problems without anyone to assist me with my work. Prem told me that Vikram would be joining us soon after completing his prayers. On the night of January 19, the first snowfall began – overnight the entire area was transformed. I was all excited about the snow but deep down I was worried about Vikram’s absence. Two days later when there was a break in the snowfall, two strangers arrived at the camp late in the evening. The men appeared physically exhausted after having to plough through fresh snow for nearly five km to get to our camp. They had come to take Prem Singh along since Vikram was seriously ill, and wanted to return to their village the same evening though it was dark. Shocked by the news, I too decided to go down to the village and visit the hospital in the nearby town where he was admitted.

The next day, I found Vikram in an emaciated state at the government hospital. He had become unbelievably thin and it was hard to recognise him. He had lost his speech, his movement and I learnt that he was unable to recognise anyone. His listless eyes stared straight at the hospital ceiling. I learnt from his mother who was there that he worried a lot about me and had fainted a few days earlier while he was preparing to leave for our camp. I again visited Vikram the next day. While I sat holding his motionless hands, consoling him that he will be fine soon, a tear trickled down the side of his cheek. He had recognised me! With great difficulty, I went back to the campsite. It was very difficult to find someone to assist me since everyone in the village believed that Vikram was attacked by a mountain spirit, but at last, I managed to find another person. Vikram passed away on January 27 at the hospital; the reason remains a mystery.

The following months during fieldwork, I sensed Vikram’s presence around me all the time. The slippery parts of the trail where he would put out his hand to help me, the pile of stones atop the Chandrashila peak, the vantage points atop the cliffs where we would sit together and look for monal, and missed the hot rotis that he would serve. He had become an integral part of my life and it was very hard to accept that he would never return. Many years have passed since I met Vikram, and the paint marks that he left on the trees and rocks have faded away, but I can never forget the enthusiasm for fieldwork and the thoughtfulness and caring nature of this simple mountain man. Even today the view of the mountains, its snow-covered peaks and the distant ringing call of the monal, instantly brings back vivid memories of Vikram Singh Bisht.

Phantom: The Saviour by S.P. Vijayakumar

It was pitch dark and unusually silent except for the distant cricket calls deep in the forest. There were three of us, including Mayavan. Chaitra and I were surveying for frogs in a Myristica swamp located in the lowland region of the southern Western Ghats. It was the first time I was venturing into this habitat in search of these frogs, especially the tiny tree frogs of the genus Philautus. The mission was to inventory the species and record their calls. Surprisingly we did not hear a single call and as I scanned the area for calls, my halogen headlamp showed an alert Mayavan searching the area around us with his own flashlight: not for frogs but for something else, somewhat larger. We had been warned by the forest watchers about the movement of pachyderms in the neighbourhood. But our curiosity couldn’t stop us from venturing into these forests. More than anything, it’s Mayavan’s presence that gave me the confidence to pursue this crazy game of frog hunting in elephant country. As I asked myself why the frogs were silent, I felt something soft on my shoulder! As my headlight turned in the direction Mayavan’s light was pointing, a few seconds passed, and there it was! A single eye glint amidst the thicket not very far from us, and though we couldn’t judge the distance in the dark, it was not far. We all froze for a few seconds, and a disturbing silence followed while we waited for Mayavan’s signal.

Within seconds, we were running through the trail laden with thorny vines… a high jump over a fallen tree…and the final 100 metres rush to our vehicle. Mayavan was the last, and he looked a little crestfallen. I asked him what happened? Scared? He replied in his humorous tone that he had lost one of his slippers. We all burst into laughter. That’s Mayavan – Phantom – a guy who can get you out of the trouble and at the same time ease the moment with his humour.

Over the last two years, every field trip has shown me a new, more interesting aspect of Mayavan. A few field trips for frog catching and call recording made him an expert in locating frogs by their calls. It just took him two days to get a hang of it and find new ways to locate them. At times, he surpasses me in the number of individuals he locates by calls. Slowly he has ventured into the world of specimen processing. I feel guilty sometimes when my late night work keeps him sleepless. But, his enthusiasm and patience gives me the much-needed energy in the field to push my own limits. With Phantom around, my life in the field becomes more than just routine data collection. With his humour, his enthusiasm to understand and learn, his patience, his rich experience, and those sharp watchful senses, it is no wonder that he has remained a “silent partner” on many research sagas like mine.

Man on the Shola Mountain by Kartik Shanker

Driving back from the field in our gypsy, Mayavan was lying in the back and staring through the skylight in the canvas top, and I heard a refrain of ‘yes no yes yes yes no no’. After a while, I became intrigued and asked him what he was doing. He responded that he was estimating the canopy cover on the way back to the field station. Just that day, he had accompanied a researcher and watched him do canopy counts through a scope. As I discovered over a 3 year period, Mayavan had an exceptional ability to pick up our research techniques and adapt them with little or no instruction.

Mayavan first started working with me when I was conducting fieldwork for my doctoral thesis at Upper Bhavani in the Nilgiris. Unlike many other field assistants, he was neither a tribal nor a local. No body of knowledge had been passed down through the generations. Everything he had learned, he had learned on his own, mostly after he dropped out of school after high school. His father was a driver with the Electricity Board, and he had lived with him in the area and started wandering around out of curiosity. When I met him, the only person who knew this region better than Mayavan was Kasi, an old poacher turned field assistant.

Mukurthi is a lovely sanctuary on the western edge of the Upper Nilgiris plateau with rolling grasslands and postcard pretty sholas nestling in the valleys. Few researchers had worked in the area, as many parts of the sanctuary were inaccessible and somehow did not have the glamour of the lower elevation elephant-dominated forests such as Mudumalai and Anamalais, or the evergreen forests of Kalakkad.

My own work there was on small mammals, mainly rodents. We carted over 200 sherman traps from shola to shola, setting them up in 1 hectare and 0.5 hectare grids, and monitoring them each morning. We trapped for over 35000 trap nights, in the sholas, grasslands and a range of plantations in the Upper Nilgiris. Mayavan and I became experts in handling the rodents – sliding our hands into the traps, nestling the rats in our palms and then slipping off the connecting rod that would open the trap, leaving the rat in our hand. Wrougton’s rat, the whitebellied form of the common rat, and our most frequent visitor, is an aggressive customer, and needs to be handled with care. A little slip and you were guaranteed a nasty bite. Mayavan was much fonder of the mice, which he would handle like pets, while he positively hated the shrews, which were the most aggressive and smelly. In fact, he was pretty good at smelling the trap and predicting which species had been caught.

Very quickly, Mayavan understood exactly what the study was about. He fully understood that we were looking at differences in diversity in sholas of different sizes (otherwise known as island biogegraphy), that we were looking at population trends, and whether these were synchronized across sholas. He could be completely trusted to supervise the fieldwork in my absence. This is in spite of the fact that Mayavan himself could not write in English. And though my other assistant(s) would keep records, it was Mayavan who often called the shots when I was away. Mayavan also had a remarkable sense of humour that kept us all in good spirits while we worked through the incessant rain and other hardships. Every researcher who passed through was quickly assigned a nickname, that was sometimes friendly and funny, and sometimes not. trusted to supervise the fieldwork in my absence. This is in spite of the fact that Mayavan himself could not write in English. And though my other assistant(s) would keep records, it was Mayavan who often called the shots when I was away. Mayavan also had a remarkable sense of humour that kept us all in good spirits while we worked through the incessant rain and other hardships. Every researcher who passed through was quickly assigned a nickname, that was sometimes friendly and funny, and sometimes not.

After I left, Mayavan helped a series of researchers with their research and Doctorates in the Upper Nilgiris. He worked with Nixon and Bhupathy of SACON on a herpetolog y project and with Uma on the Nilgiri pipits. Today he works at the Centre for Ecological Sciences with my PhD students. He is a fair expert on herps, particularly frogs. He continues to be the premier field assistant for rodents, and is occassionally called on to assist with trapping studies. More than anything else, it is his quick grasp of field methods, his curiousity for the science and his deep commitment to both the project and the researchers, that make him so valuable.

It had been nearly half an hour since we started looking for the nesting bird that we had been waiting to spot all day. We weren’t hopeful, and it was getting dark. But Mangu Singh Shekhawat confidently continued to scan the thick forest on the hill across the nallah. Suddenly he froze. We followed his gaze and, sure enough – there it was! Obscured by a drooping vine, thirty feet up on a rocky ledge, and glaring at us with its penetrating yellow eyes was our bird – the cryptic Brown Fish Owl – sitting in its nest. Mangu gave a triumphant grin that seemed to say, “I told you so!”

When we first arrived in Sariska for our study on birds in March 2003, we had expected to employ a local person from the Gurjar community as our field assistant. Instead, we ended up working with this energetic, mischievous young ‘outsider’ hailing from a far-off village, who earned a living as a nature guide to tourists at Sariska. On our very first day in Sariska, an aggressive rhesus monkey got into our vehicle and grabbed one of our bags. Mangu swung into action, chased the rhesus and deftly prised it out of the surprised monkey’s hands! It was then that we sensed he indeed was a different kind of person.

But how did Mangu end up in Sariska? “Back in our village, I helped my father and brother till our small piece of land. Cultivation was failing because of the long drought and I started looking for a job. Then I came across this advertisement in the newspaper calling for trainee nature guides and thought I’d try my luck in Sariska,” Mangu recollects. “I was new and had absolutely no knowledge about the forest or animals. It took me more than a year to gather confidence. Later, with experience, I started to enjoy it.” He smiles shyly and adds, “Now they call me ‘Mowgli’ Mangu.” Today, he’s just about the only trained guide remaining in Sariska. Out of the twenty-two who undertook the training, many have left their jobs. Some continued being nature guides but went away to other parks like Ranthambhore and Keoladeo. The rest took up better-paid jobs at privately owned resorts.

During our early days in Sariska, Mangu showed us around the Reserve, familiarising us with the terrain. His field skills and excellent relations with both the forest staff and the villagers helped us overcome the teething troubles of fieldwork. Every time we crossed a forest chowki, Mangu would inevitably stop and ask about the health of the forest staff there. His very presence was sure to bring an indulgent smile to every staffer’s face! When passing a hamlet there was seldom an occasion when Mangu was not invited for tea or lassi by some villager. His high spirits and good humour never failed to dispel the tedium and monotony of the long days of fieldwork.

Mangu quickly fits into his role while setting up the project. When we were scouting for sites, his knowledge of the place and the people was a great asset. Not only did he suggest ideal locations but also helped us plan out logistics for our study, which was aimed at investigating the effects of forest resource extraction on bird communities. During the course of our study, Mangu rapidly supplemented his existing knowledge of Sariska’s fauna by including more than 100 species of birds to his list, which was previously limited to large mammals as demanded by his job as a tourist guide. His sharp eye was quick to detect and identify birds and soon he also became familiar with their calls. With plants, he was equally adept. Though he already knew the vernacular names of many plants, he also learnt their scientific names with enthusiasm.

‘Mowgli’ Mangu’s observations go beyond plain identification and touch the realms of natural history and ecology, something he has learnt not from books but on his own in the field. Why are the vultures gathering there? – There must be a kill. Why are the partridges alarming? – There should be a mongoose nearby. Is that bird carrying a grub in its bill? – There should be a nest with chicks. And unlike many other paid naturalists who tend to exaggerate events just for extra effect, we found that his portrayal of events, animal behaviour and sightings were true in every detail.

Instead of being intimidated by technology Mangu eagerly mastered it; new instruments fascinated him. He took the initiative to understand the use of gadgets like the rangefinder and GPS and learnt scientific survey techniques such as point counts. This was a great relief; the tasks of data collection could now be shared efficiently and we could concentrate more on observation. By the time we concluded our fieldwork, Mangu had learnt and contributed more to the project than an additional researcher could ever have.

Mangu carved out a niche for himself as an excellent guide, especially among serious naturalists and birdwatchers. His reputation spread by word of mouth. “Most tourists are not seriously interested in wildlife,” he often complained. “They are impatient and loud and only want to see tigers. I prefer people who genuinely appreciate the wilderness.” After a tedious week with noisy tourists from Delhi and Jaipur, he looked forward to Friday afternoons when he was contracted with the Sariska Palace Resort to take groups of birdwatchers out on a birding walk. Accompanying him into the forest, one could sense his keen enthusiasm for all wildlife – whether a humble dung beetle or a charismatic king vulture.

Apart from guiding hardcore wildlifers, Mangu has also had a chance to assist several documentary filmmakers. “I have learnt a lot from such people,” he admits. “They have helped me develop a better understanding of nature.” He shows his prized possessions handed to him as gifts by visitors impressed with his work – a pair of binoculars, a field guide to birds, several books, pictures, postcards and souvenirs. His fascinating experiences in tiger country with various naturalists over the years could fill a book. “It was a quiet afternoon,” he narrated one such incident. “I was helping a German filmmaker take shots of a langur. The monkey had descended to drink water from a forest stream, when a leopard, who apparently had been eyeing its prey for quite a while, jumped out of the overhanging tree to grab the unwitting animal!” His eyes twinkle at the recollection. “I was so lucky to have witnessed such an awesome sight.” During his long years at Sariska, Mangu has earned the trust of the park officials at all levels. Any information provided by him on wildlife is taken seriously. He is one of the few regular volunteers during the annual wildlife census. Mangu also has the distinction of being the only person outside the forest department to win an award for his contribution to the cause of wildlife conservation. Working as a guide and doubling as a field assistant, Mangu regularly sent money home. “There’s no water for our fields. During the drought the well dried. Now we need to sink a bore-well and that is expensive,” he used to say. “I like this work. It is exciting and I learn a lot. Someday I will have my own Gypsy. I would also like to learn English so that I can explain things better to foreign tourists.” However, Mangu’s plans went awry with the disturbing news that tigers had disappeared from Sariska. Mangu was very concerned and he volunteered with the forest department to search for tiger signs, and collect intelligence about possible poaching.

But soon it was official: the tiger was declared locally extinct in Sariska. “Tourist numbers dropped drastically and I had two kids to bring up,” Mangu lamented. “I considered moving to Bharatpur or Ranthambhore, or even going to Jaipur and work as a tourist guide.” Finding that it was difficult to create a niche for himself from scratch in other wildlife areas, he reluctantly went to Jaipur to seek a living for himself as a regular tourist guide.

It was a struggle having to switch gears from wildlife to conventional tourism. But Mangu being Mangu, he took this new role in his stride. The following year he went to Pondicherry to learn French and since then has served as an exclusive guide for French tourists. However, in recent times with a dip in the arrival of overseas tourists, he faces another crisis. But his heart is still in Sariska. He hopes that someday he can find a job with a long-term research project in Sariska, so that he can get back to exploring the Aravallis. Mangu Singh Shekhawat is an exceptional case. He is educated, resourceful and versatile – he will adapt and survive. But, for most other field assistants, life is tough after projects wind up. They, having spent their prime years doing little else but assisting researchers, suddenly discover that their special skills can no longer earn them a living, and it’s too late in life to learn another trade. Taking a cue from Mangu, field assistants with their uncommon abilities can make excellent naturalists, given some training and support. Their abilities could come in handy if they find employment in tourism or forest departments. We are happy that Mangu Singh managed to overcome a livelihood crisis. But the research community is definitely the loser. Losing such trained and committed people to other professions is also a major loss for conservation in these regions, and we need to think of ways in which to address these issues. Mangu and other talented field assistants are worth a lot more than just a passing mention in the Acknowledgement sections of scientific papers.