Summer Crew

Orjan is a Swedish PhD student who bought a one-way ticket to Mongolia to work at the base camp of our long-term research project.  These are his adventures…

The summer crew arrived in Base Camp on the evening of the 15th of June and since then, things have been busy here. The crew consists of Kim (boss), Koustubh (our regional biologist from India), Ashley (volunteer from UK), Lou (volunteer from New Zealand), Munkhoo and Sumbee (interns from Mongolia). I am working in the same area as when I first came here last year but some things have changed… there aren’t many fresh snow leopard sign in the canyons…instead, the area is now swarming with ibex…

The summer crew has been very busy putting out cameras all over the mountain range, performing snow leopard sign surveys and collecting snow leopard scats. It is a very ambitious study that they have planned and it could very well have worked if our car hadn’t taken one blow too much and finally succumbed to the Gobi terrain. Miraculously though, Miji was able to get the car to Gurvantes and have some more stuff welded to the undercarriage to keep the various parts in place and it is now possible to use it if one drives slowly and carefully. 

Provided that we can get the car to Ulaanbaatar, we will repair it and sell it, we’ll see what happens on the trip… and I thought it was an adventure to drive the car up to UB when it was in good shape last autumn. This means that I will go home [for break] a little sooner than planned but we need to get the car to UB.