Encounter: Chestnut-tailed Minla

Perhaps I had a karmic debt to pay the Chestnut-tailed Minla 

Battered by my first ascent of the Garhwal Himalaya, I was listening to the lament of my creaking knees en route to Kunol from Wan when Sahastra, whose knees had served him well, and Jennifer, who imbibed superpowers from yoga, decided to adventurously explore the forest in search of white-throated laughingthrushes. While I beat about the bush aimlessly, they returned triumphant. There is nothing more psychologically demolishing than being physically downbeat as your birding compadres tick away lifers. But then, I was too numbed to even bleed to Jennifer's unkind cut. 

“Did you see that?” she asked, pointing to a blur of colour in a bush that disappeared instantly. 

I shook my head. Did anyone here care about my knees? 

“It used to be called the Bar-throated Siva,” she explained as we continued walking. “Such an apt name it was. Now they've gone and renamed it.” 

Did I care? Oh, my knees! 

“What do they call it now?” asked Sahastra, whose recent sighting of the laughingthrushes had placed him in a higher league and sharpened his curiosity in the natural world. 

“Chestnut-tailed Minla,” said Jennifer, and ranted, “And no one even notices the colour of the tail.” 

Somewhere in my pain-fogged brain that name triggered a flicker of memory. But nothing came of it except a sore spot at having missed another lifer. Sahastra and Jennifer exchanged notes on the renaming and reclassification of birds, a discussion that culminated with them dousing Pam Rasmussen with buckets of vitriol. I returned to listening to the creaking of my knees. 

On my next trip to Garhwal in 2009, Sahastra and I rounded the bend beyond the hamlet of Chopta and were gazing upon the layered vista of valleys that unfolded before us from the serpentine road to Gopeshwar. Far above us, wreathed in mist, the spires of Tungnath peeped out into the sky. 

We had almost been soaked by a sudden thunderstorm the previous evening and wanted to return to our lodgings before another similar predicament befell us. Suddenly, we were stopped dead in our tracks by an enormous mixed hunting party of grey-hooded warblers, black-throated, spot-winged and green-backed tits, along with variegated laughingthrushes. Among them, one oddball bird stood out. It was nothing like any I'd ever seen. Its throat was barred, it was colourful overall and I noticed nothing of the tail except that it was long. Sahastra, too, had trouble thumbing through his mental log to identify it instantly. 

“This is that guy,” he said helpfully, “the one you missed.” 

That hit a raw nerve instantly. “I know,” I hissed, overcome by elation. A birder doesn't forget a missed encounter easily. He goes back and pores over the page listing his forgone quarry and memorises its image until it shimmers in his mind's eye with envy and desire. 

Perhaps it was the law of attraction, but the Chestnut-tailed Minla (Minla strigula) and I had finally met at the feet of Siva. What ironic coincidence!

Note: This picture was taken by Sandy on his trip with Sahastra. I couldn't join them then. Clearly, the Minla had no karmic accounts to settle with them and revealed itself happily.

Photograph: Sandeep Somasekharan

Encounter: Crimson Sunbird

A chance meeting with this charming sunbird kept our spirits high through the unpredictable Himalayan weather

In September 2010, on our way to the shrine of Madhyamaheshwar, we spent a night at the beautifully situated GMVN guest house at Ukhimath. It had been a year of catastrophic rains – an extremely heavy and extended monsoon had wreaked havoc on the roads and the landslides continued to pile up as more rain was forecast.

As we stood contemplating the ominous news that we had just received -- a part of the road leading to the starting point of our trek at the village of Uniana had been washed off -- we picked up a sunbird-like call from a bottle-brush tree beside the bungalow. 

Could it be the Green-tailed Sunbird? I had seen it at Chopta (2,900m) but this (at 1,130 m) seemed a tad low for either the Green-tailed or the Fire-tailed Sunbird. But it was also high for the ubiquitous Purple Sunbird that is so common in the plains. As we stepped out to scan the tree, we spied the unmistakable scarlet breast that glowed as if on fire in the rays of the morning sun. It was the Crimson Sunbird (Aethopyga siparaja).

Though this sunbird is fairly common (it is found in the Western Himalayas, Sahyadris, and a race occurs in the Nicobar Islands), this was my first sighting. The bird was quite restless and kept flitting from the bottle brush tree to a large dense-canopied tree nearby. It made these sorties while vocalizing all the time. 

The bird has a crimson patch on the mantle and a yellow spot just above the rump but from the view that we had, the scarlet breast and throat merged into a rather drab grey-olive belly. The tail is greenish and much longer than that of the Small Sunbird or Crimson-backed sunbird (Nectarinia minima) which also has a much less curved beak. The Crimson Sunbird is supposed to have a preference for red flowers which may have been the reason for its multiple sorties to the bottlebrush, a plant introduced from Australia. It’s also a favorite of the Purple Sunbird (Nectarinia asiatica).

Pretty soon the staff of the guest house got interested and took turns gazing at the beauty – which was present at Ukhimath year-round but which they had probably never looked at so closely. Beaming with pride at our joy of a lifer, they said: “Uttarakhand mein aapko bahut sundar pakshi dikhenge” (you will see very beautiful birds in Uttarakhand). We knew they were right and in the days ahead their lighthearted quip kept our hopes high as we we negotiated blocked roads, incessant rains and imminent landslides to bird persistently in the Himalaya.

The Crimson Sunbird is the unofficial national bird of Singapore.

Text: Sahastrarashmi

Photograph: Sandeep Somasekharan

Chaukhamba, the four-pronged mountain of Garhwal

I was drawn to the massif gleaming in the horizon as it towered over the lesser ranges in the foreground

Chaukhamba (right) from Bedni Bugyal. The peak next to it is Shivling (near Gangotri).
Photo: Sahastrarashmi (2002)

In September 2009, Sahastra and I took a train from Delhi to Haridwar and ventured on our second trip together to the Himalayas. On the first leg we aimed to explore the trail to Tungnath, one of the five sacred shrines dedicated to Shiva (known as the Panch Kedar). We began by taking the trail to Deoria Tal from Ukhimath, a hillside town overlooking the Mandakini. As we discovered the next morning, the mountain river, one of the tributaries of the Ganga, was a glinting turquoise ribbon thousands of feet in the valley below. Yet its muffled roar sought us out like a persistent stage whisper. 


We had spent an exhausting day riding a cramped made-for-the-mountains bus from Haridwar to Ukhimath via Rudraprayag, the confluence of the Mandakini and the Alaknanda rivers. At 4 pm the town, made respectively famous and notorious by by Jim Corbett and a man-eating leopard in the 1920s, was hot, muggy and swarming with flies. It didn't feel like we were in the Himalayas at all. 


At Ukhimath we found some respite though it wasn't cold as we had expected (or hoped -- because the Himalayan cold is at once welcome and frightening). The peak of Kedarnath, lit by the embers of a long-gone sun, presided over a great part of the evening as we sat on the lawns of the GMVN guesthouse running over our plans for the next day. 

Chaukhamba from Deoria Tal

A jeep driver dropped us off at Sari, the roadhead to Deoria Tal. Glad to be on foot again after many months, we began a laboured ascent to the lake as our city-slicker lungs acclimated to the altitude. Oak and rhododendron paved the fern-fringed path. Warblers abounded in the low canopy. As the sun came out, griffons began to circle overhead. On the sun-warmed rocks, Kashmir Rock Agamas sat motionless, their slaty blue limbs blending into the smooth stone beneath them.  Some of them appeared to be making a meal of small flowers growing among the grass.

Kashmir Agamas basking in the sun

After climbing 4 km and about 3000 vertical feet, we arrived at a glade. Sahastra, who was walking ahead of me, exclaimed, "You must see this!" A gentle meadow began where the forest ended. The edges of a limpid lake reflected the charcoal sky. And ahead of it, presiding over the horizon, was a massif. It had to be Chaukhamba.


Chaukhamba -- the name literally means four pillars -- is one of the highest peaks in the Garhwal region of Uttarakhand.  The spires range in elevation from 23,419 feet (Chaukhamba 1) to 22,487 feet (Chaukhamba 4). The highest peak was first summited in 1952 by Lucien George and Victor Russenberger, two Swiss members of a French expedition (source: Wikipedia).

A Himalayan Woodpecker tries its luck on a slender tree

We admired the peak in awe for a long time and then explored the lake. A variety of warblers and flycatchers were in abundance. White wagtails chased insects in the grass while a Himalayan woodpecker knocked on wood for luck. Black-headed jays were almost tame, coming up to the kitchen shack for morsels.


Chaukhamba remained a persistent presence on our journey from Chopta to Tungnath and all the way up to Chandrashila, at 13,123 feet the highest peak on this trail.

Chaukhamba from the trail to Tungnath

Two years earlier, on a trek to Bedni Bugyal via Loharjung pass, I had encountered Chaukhamba for the first time. Climbing through an oak forest from the hamlet of Didana toward Ali Bugyal, I was drawn to a mountain gleaming in the horizon as it towered over the lesser ranges that had eclipsed it while we were at lower altitudes. I distinctly remembered its massive hulking form and the four spires. As we watched, clouds veiled the view and we did not see it again. 


Chaukhamba has since dominated my memory of the Himalayas. Up until I glimpsed the serene and stately form of Nanda Devi from Auli. But that is another story.


Text and photos by Beej
Main photo by Sahastrarashmi

Encounter: Russet Sparrow

Like thousands of coins jingling in hundreds of fists, the chirruping of sparrows heralds dusk. Trees quiver as roosting flocks fuss like train passengers arguing over berths. The din dies down with the fading light and all is quiet again. Until the morning, when breakfast squabbles are made public and flocks prepare to go about their business foraging around homesteads, fields and forest clearings. Few people give sparrows a second look, but the first glance itself evokes tender smiles because nearly everybody has observed the disappearance of House Sparrows from cities. However, they are still up and about in villages where old-fashioned houses offer them the shelter of eaves and awnings and their pastoral environs an ample supply of food. In the Himalaya, though, it may serve us well to keep our eyes peeled for the Russet Sparrow (Passer rutilans cinnamomeus). Its call is similar to the House Sparrow's, but males in breeding plumage are easy to tell by their rich cinnamon crowns and backs. For this reason, it was earlier called the Cinnamon Sparrow (a much more evocative name, in my humble but effete opinion). This male (in winter plumage) was photographed at the Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam guest house in Ukhimath, Uttarakhand among a flock of House Sparrows (Passer domesticus). The House Sparrows, of course, were busy making their tribe increase. Which raised the following questions: a) Do the two species interbreed where their ranges overlap? b) Do House Sparrows breed year round while Russet Sparrows have a fixed breeding season? Someone in the know might be able to tell me. Photographs © Bijoy Venugopal. All rights reserved.