Snow Leopard Vs. Camel?

Orjan is a Swedish PhD student who works at the base camp of our long-term research project in Mongolia. These are his adventures…

It’s getting cold, right now it is about minus 20 degrees C, and I am sitting in a tent. Yet again I wonder why on Earth I work with snow leopards and not sea turtles. ‘Collaring’ or tagging sea turtles must be great. One can sit on the beach with a Pina Colada and simply wait for the turtles to come up and lay eggs. As they pass by, you put down the Pina Colada, grab a bottle of glue and a transmitter, attach it to the shell and go back to the Pina Colada. But no, I had to chose snow leopards. Haven’t even smelled a whiff of Pina Coladas, or beaches for that matter, since I came to the Gobi. We do have some sand and it is hot in the summer but the two vital parts are missing (three if you include the beach chair).

Speaking of heat we have found a new measuring tool for when to put in more firewood/coal/dung in the stove: a cat-o-meter. It works splendid. If there is enough firewood in the stove Friday will sleep about 50 cm from it (under the table), as the fire dies the cat moves closer to the stove. Just before the fire goes out she squeezes herself under the stove, very good notification that it is time to put in more firewood. The cat comes out in a hurry when we put in more wood, reckon it can actually get too hot even for a cat.

Work-wise we are doing clusters most of the days (i.e. checking on sites where there seems to be a ‘cluster’ of GPS locations for a snow leopard). The big news is that we have found a camel that Aztai killed. It was a young camel but from the tracks in the dirt it still looked as if he had a tough time bringing it down. To my knowledge, that is the first camel found to be killed by a snow leopard. Aztai seemed to be pretty proud of himself because he had made 15-20 scrapes at the kill site. Almost as if to say ‘look what I just did’.

It’s tough to drive the dirt bikes for hours and hours in this cold. I am bundled up in my Mongolian del (robe), two caps, a facemask, ski goggles, down jacket etc. But the wind still chills all the way into the bones. It’s also hard to control the bike with all the clothes, especially once you’ve lost feeling in the hands. Yesterday I drove over a bump too fast and made a nice jump with the bike. I managed to hold on to the handle but apart from that had no contact with the bike. Perhaps I could start doing dirt bike shows in case I get tired of research…

Oh well, enough whining about the cold. Will get used to it in a couple of days.