The great bird chase
06 March 2017
Back in the early 1980s when I lived in Karachi, I spent my weekends wandering about the wild places of Sindh. While old ruins where a favourite haunt, my other preference was the hundreds of small lakes and canals of Thatta and Badin districts. There were birds, birds and birds that I had never seen before. If truth be told, that was when I learned that the pariah kite is not the only hawk-like bird!
Referring only to wildlife, my ten years in Sindh until December 1988 took me to the Khirthar Mountains on one side and to the lakes of lower Sindh on the other. Those wonderful years form a kaleidoscope of heart-warming images: upward of five hundred flamingos in a lake barely off a road somewhere in Badin, a golden eagle on the prowl above the Khirthar crags, a male Pallas’s fish eagle bringing food to its mate on eggs, a desert cat near Naukot Fort and leopard pug marks in the lower Khirthar Mountains. There are also memories of virtually hordes of marsh harriers, Brahminy kites, jacarandas, and migratory ducks of a dozen different species almost within arm’s length.
Read more »Labels: Birding, Birds, Sindh, Wildlife
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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کیا آپ نے کبھی دیوسائی کے بارے میں سنا ہے؟
18 February 2017
آپ پا کستان کے شمال میں واقع فلک بوس پہاڑی چوٹیوں کے بارے میں تو ضرور جانتے ہوں گے۔
کیا آپ نے کبھی دیوسائی کے بارے میں سنا ہے؟
یہ پاکستان کے شمالی علاقے سکردو کے قریب ایک بلند چوٹی پر واقع ایک مقام ہے۔ سفر نامے ویو سائی: ’لینڈ آف جائینمس‘ دیوسائی اور اس میں بسنے والے جائینس کے بارے میں ہے۔
یہ کون سی مخلوق ہے، اور دیوسائی کیسی جگہ ہے، اس بارے میں سنیے سفرنامے کے مصنف سلمان رشید سے بی بی سی اردو کی ماہ پارہ صفدر کی خصوصی گفتگو۔
Labels: Baltistan, BBC, Books, Deosai, Deosai: Land of the Giant, Gilgit–Baltistan, Nadeem Khawar, Northern Pakistan, Podcast, Travel Literature, Urdu, Wildlife
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Hope for the Suleman Markhor
16 July 2015
Markhor – Snake Eater in Persian, is a magical name for a mountain goat. Some believe it actually ate snakes that earned it the name, but this shy and illusive animal has never really been caught dining on snakes. T. J. Roberts, the naturalist, therefore believes that the name comes from the Pashto: mar meaning snake and akhur for horn, that is, Serpentine Horn.
Belonging to the genus Capra there are seven recognised sub-species of the species falconeri. Of these five inhabit the mountains of Pakistan. Their corkscrew antlers that twist up and outward differentiate each sub-species and make these handsome animals valuable as trophies. The styles range from the single twist and wide spreading flare of Capra falconeri falconeri (a.k.a. Astor Markhor) in the Northern Areas of Pakistan to the three tight twists in the unflared horns of C. f. jerdoni (Suleman Markhor).
Labels: Balochistan, Prisoner on a Bus: Travels Through Pakistan, Wildlife
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Deosai: Land of the Giant
07 October 2013
Deosai: Land of the Giant is out and available at Sang e Meel (042-3722-0100) Lahore.
Labels: Books, Deosai, Deosai: Land of the Giant, Gilgit–Baltistan, History, Nadeem Khawar, Northern Pakistan, Travel Literature, Travel Photography, Wildlife
posted by Salman Rashid @ 17:55,
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Deosai: Land of the Giant
20 September 2013
Book is available at Sang e Meel (042-3722-0100), Lahore
Deosai has long kept an aura of mystery. Long before the first European explorers ventured into this high altitude plateau, vague knowledge of its existence was current in the plains of the Indian subcontinent. Thence the word had been carried by the nomadic Gujjar cow herders who fattened their animals on the rich summer grasses of this vast uninhabited tableland. The Gujjar accounts wafted from person to person to become a confused tale of a plateau stretching flat, unbroken and treeless from the mountains north of the capital of Kashmir all the way to the deserts of Tartary. The myth was finally broken in the 1830s.
Read more »Labels: Books, Deosai, Deosai: Land of the Giant, Gilgit–Baltistan, Nadeem Khawar, Northern Pakistan, Travel Literature, Travel Photography, Wildlife
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Deosai: Land of the Giant
13 September 2013
I had dreamed of being on Deosai since 1984. Eventually got there in the summer of 1990. It was every bit like the descriptions I had read in 19th century travel and exploration literature: a vast open treeless expanse rolling in every direction until it ran into the rocky crags on its periphery. I was hooked. Thereafter I returned several times, mainly to be with the Himalayan Wildlife Foundation team working on the conservation of bears and other wildlife.
The text of this book was written in 2004. But never having considered myself a real photographer, I waited and waited and waited for the photography to materialise. Eventually my friend Nadeem Khawar, the well-known nature and wildlife photographer, who I call Guru, agreed to spend three months on Deosai. That was the summer of 2010 and Nadeem came back with the most priceless imagery ever.
Read more »Labels: Books, Deosai, Deosai: Land of the Giant, Nadeem Khawar, Northern Pakistan, Travel Literature, Travel Photography, Wildlife
posted by Salman Rashid @ 21:14,
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Baghanwala: place of gardens
15 July 2013
Kamil Khan Mumtaz, the noted architect and architectural historian, calls Baghanwala ‘a poor man’s Fatehpur Sikri.’ While that fabulous ghost town of Akbar the Great bedazzles with red sandstone buildings splendidly curved as if stone was but puttee in the hands of the masons, the tiny village of Baghanwala too boasts a few houses with lintels and mock pilasters of similar sandstone. Of course, this is not the famous Jodhpur sandstone, but thee somewhat more porous one quarried locally in the Salt Range.
The town itself, placed in tiers upon a hillside, has a pleasing appearance as one approaches it from the east. At closer quarters it is not very different from most Salt Range hill villages with neat flagstoned streets and houses constructed mostly from dressed grey and red sandstone. Brick construction is only now catching up. But it is not the architecture of Baghanwala that drew the attention of kings and adventurers in the past and today that of the tourist and student of history. Great events unfolded right outside this village.
Labels: History, jhelum: City of the Vitasta, Punjab, Wildlife
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Sardar Naseer Tareen: A Man for all Seasons
10 July 2013
As the son of the last sardar (chief) of the Tareen tribe of Pashtuns of Pishin, north of Quetta, Naseer Tareen should normally be wearing the mantle of the sardar. He is, however, anything but the archetypal tribal chieftain: he is suave, cultured, educated, outspoken and down to earth. If that is not remarkable enough, Tareen is also one tribal chief who never approved of hunting and in a society where meat eating is macho, prefers vegetarian eating. His Urdu is untainted with the hard Pashtun accent and his English gives away his two decades in the United States where he studied and worked.
When he first went to the University of Connecticut in 1958, he had hoped to return home with a degree in International Relations to join the coveted Civil Service. However it did not take long for his mentors in school to realise that his real line of work was theatre arts or communications. ‘There I was, the son of a Pashtun sardar, being told to pursue what would be called the mirasi’s work at home,’ he says with a laugh. Perhaps because he never saw himself as a bureaucrat, Tareen was looking for a way out, and a year later he decided to study Film Making.
Labels: Balochistan, People, Sardar Naseer Tareen, Wildlife
posted by Salman Rashid @ 00:00,
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Transplant drive
08 February 2013
I was telling a relative of mine about the one dozen different species of birds that nest in my garden (and it’s a one-kanal house) and at any given time the song of twice as many species. He, a retired judge of the superior court, living in Judicial Colony near Thokar Niaz Beg was surprised that there was a total absence of birdsong in their area.
I told him that the birds were missing entirely because of the absence of indigenous species of trees in the locality. The entire colony is choc-a-bloc with all sorts of exotic trees. There is not a single peepul, neem, amaltas, to name only a few.
Read more »Labels: Birding, Birds, Ecology, Lahore, Wildlife
posted by Salman Rashid @ 14:29,
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