Quick post as I've found some solar backup (thanks Pramesh). Heavy rain last night but surface water not as bad as yesterday. We are cut off for for large parts of the day though and there won't be any electricity for who knows how long. Yesterday (sorry about image, it was all a bit tricky, later we were waist deep for several kilometers) we battled through to the Leopard Transit Area, "thank you Nirajan, your courage and reliability mean a lot to me" - I've logged up a lot of jungle time with this young Chetri, he's doing really well.
The leopard Dipnani is ok, not happy but safe in the high zone I built. Main concern now will be getting food to her over the rest of the monsoon period, I always knew that if she can just survive this crucial period this thing will have a decent shot. We can only try. May have to do the same trek again in a day or two, was hard going for several hours.
The second image is of a young one who gave me about 30 namastes at the end of a Living with Leopards class where we had over 100 bodies of all ages. Thank you all for being there and weather conditions permitting the program moves into other areas soon. It's all about education and respect. The other issues I've talked about recently won't matter once the young ones understand the true essence of real conservation and not politics, cute animals etc. I have a dream of a forestry college somewhere in this area, wouldn't that be something...
