Working at the KAT Centre

Working at the KAT Centre was one of the hardest things I've ever done. For the first week I came home every night and cried. I had a hard time understanding how people could be so cruel and how they could lack so much compassion for a living being--one day I attended a furry pure-bred male dog that our staff had picked up on the streets. It had been tortured by its owner. It's tail had been partially cut off and the spinal cord was exposed and someone had taken a knife and purposefully cut open the skin between its toes. The dog couldn't stop shrieking and chasing his tail in pain. One would think that after years of mistreatment the street dogs of Nepal would be aggressive, but in my entire time at the KAT Centre, not a single dog showed signs of aggression. The volunteers and I discussed this mystery at length and in the end we reasoned that it was survival of the fittest. An aggressive dog in Nepal would be mercilessly beaten to death, so only the submissive ones survive. These are some of the portraits that I took during my last days at the KAT Centre.

This is Tinki. My face still breaks into a huge smile when I say her name. I found Tinki cowering in the back of one of the cages at the centre. She had just been spayed and was about to be put back on the streets. I took her out because she was too scared to eat her food. I tried to hand feed her and after some coaxing she finally gave in. I carried her for a while and by the end of the day she had adopted me. Jan let me keep her the whole time I was there and I promised to find her a home. Tinki soon established that she was boss of the KAT Centre and guardian of the puppies. She made me laugh all of the time, once when I was working on my computer I closed the office door and Tinki found a way to jump four feet up in the air and through the office window and she promptly seated herself on my lap. Before I left I put up signs all over Kathmandu and about a month after I left an elderly Tibetan couple adopted her. I hope she has a good home.

Tinki cuddling

Tinki thinking she's a momma

A few of the animals that passed through our clinic were lucky enough to receive real veterinary care from two Australian vets that came to Nepal to volunteer for two weeks. This picture was taken just after Lola had her arm surgery.

The Witch That Peed On Me.

Sunset Views from the Ananda Wellness Resort, Koh Pha Ngan

It has been too long since I've posted anything on my blog, so this week, it is my goal to catch you up on my travels and post some of the pictures from the countries I have visited. After volunteering at the KAT Centre in Nepal I went home to the US to visit my parents. My father was having surgery and after having spent time caring for homeless dogs, it was also time to go visit my own--whom I missed terribly. After visiting my parents I made my way to South America with plans to hike Aconcagua, a very high mountain, which except for the altitude and the uncomfortableness of having to wear proper ice-climbing boots (the kind that are like ski boots) starting at basecamp, is a rather easy hike. The next three-and-a-half months were a bit of a travel disaster.

First I made a stop in Colombia to visit my relatives and check up on the new house my parents are building. The house was almost finished and there were to be no workers that week, so I left my back pack in my room with all of my brand new mountain equipment and all of my prized photography equipment. This, of course, was the moment when thieves decided to break in. They stole all of my things including my fleece facemask (probably to rob more houses with), the oven, all of the kitchen appliances, the TVs, all of the installed energy efficient lightbulbs, and all of our junk food. The thieves were brazen enough to sit down in the kitchen to eat our oreo cookies and left the tin wide open and on the kitchen counter. At least they left the toilet paper. Luckily there was nothing else to take.

I'm not one of those people that is terribly attached to material things but having my camera stolen felt like someone had chopped one of my arms off. I travel, because I photograph. So this was a major setback.  As for having all of my gear stolen, since I was in a country where no good equipment can be had, and about to go on a hike where the temperature can reach -40C and the winds can reach 60 miles per hour, I was mostly worried about losing my fingers and toes to frostbite if I didn't get a hold of some gear. So the only solution was to reorder the stuff, overnight it to my parents in the US, and pay the exhorbitant sums of money that FEDEX charges for expedited "door to door" international delivery from Mcallen, Texas to Mendoza Argentina. The package had 10 days to arrive because on my way to Aconcagua I was making a stop over in Peru to visit my best guy friend, Aaron Drayer and to see Machu Picchu.

I made it to Peru, ever saddened that I would not be able to take photographs of Machu Picchu. I had a great time in Lima with Aaron and his Peruvian wife, Violeta. Then I flew to Cuzco for my much awaited train ride to Machu Picchu. I should have suspected that something was amiss when I arrived at the Lima airport that morning and noticed that almost all of the flights to Cuzco had been canceled except for mine. And then again when I arrived in Cuzco and called the hostel in Aguas Calientes to confirm my reservation and the lady on the line asked if I was sure I could get there. As it turns out, while I was in the air the river that passes through the Sacred Valley was in the process of flooding and taking with it 6km of railroad and a few villages. Several days later the Peruvian government started evacuating stranded travelers from Aguas Calientes on military helicopters. There was no way into Machu Picchu and I was stranded in Cuzco for the next week.

When I landed in Mendoza, one day before the beginning of the trip, there was a letter from Fedex waiting for me telling me that my package had been held up at customs in Buenos Aires and the only way to retrieve my climbing gear was to fly to Buenos Aires and pick it up. This, of course, would not have been possible. After countless phone calls with Fedex in the US and Argentina, I had to give up on having my gear and rent what I could. I didn't manage to summit Aconcagua, in part because my left ankle started aching after the first day at basecamp. Despite my daily 30min "ice-downs' in glacier water or snow, my ankle brace, ankle tape, and having to hire a $300 a day porter to wares, it seemed as if my ankle couldn't withstand carrying any weight--which basically consisted of two liters of water--substantially more than I ever had to carry in Nepal where the myriads of guesthouses along the way and the amiable and always eager to please sherpas make it such that one can get away with climbing Everest with only a fanny pack and an ice axe. In part I couldn't summit Aconcagua because my over-gloves were too big and kept falling off and the undergloves that I had to purchase to replace my own were inadequate to withstand the cold and wind. So, I reluctantly made the decision to turn back to save my ankle and my fingers from frostbite.

After Aconcagua and the loss of my camera my ankle hurt too much and I was too disheartened to continue my trip through Southern Argentina and Chile. Luckily this means I missed the earthquake in Concepcion, Chile because that was where I was headed. Instead I checked out the wineries in Mendoza and booked a bus to Buenos Aires to retrieve my gear from customs. Then Buenos Aires flooded. This is when my uncle told me that I needed an exorcism because a witch had most certainly peed on me.

As luck had it, I couldn't change my airline ticket and had to spend the next 2 weeks in flooded BA. I broke the time up by heading to neighboring Uruguay (where I did nothing but sit on the beach) a much underrated country before heading back to my home in Colombia.

After Colombia I made my way to Japan for spring and cherry blossom season except that due to unseasonably cold weather, the cherry blossoms were late and it snowed or rained everyday I was there except one. After a week in Japan, while stepping of a curb on the streets of Tokyo, my left ankle twisted and I ended up at Tokyo Hospital with a mild sprain and on crutches for the next two weeks. I considered throwing in the towel and going back home immediately, but I had scheduled a 5 day cooking class, a meditation retreat in a monastery, and time at a colonic detox resort in Thailand and since none of it involved walking I decided to relax there. Thailand is a fantastically cheap place to relax and get top notch alternative medicine.

Now I find myself in Koh Pha Ngan--finally off crutches. Still with a bum ankle but much better. My 12-day Vipassana meditation in the monastery seems to have sanctified me enough to lift the witch's curse and I find myself staring blissfully at the ocean.

P.S. Never use FedEx door to door delivery to Argentina (and enquire diligently before using them anywhere else in the world outside of the US). When I picked up the package at customs, the agent told me that FedEx knows that it can not offer door to door service anywhere in Argentina because every single package that flies to Argentina is held up at Buenos Aires customs and must be picked up at the airport. Plus, I had to pay $150 in storage fees for picking up my package "late".

Volunteering at the KAT Center November 23, 2009

Today I started working at the Kathmandu Animal Treatment Centre (KAT Centre), a non-profit organization that works for the humane treatment of street dogs in Kathmandu. The KAT Centre rescues sick or injured street dogs, nurses them back to health, and spays them (only the females) before reintroducing them back to the area where they came from. Ideally, these street dogs would have a permanent home at the KAT Centre but there are over 20,000 stray dogs in central Kathmandu and the center does not have the resources or the capacity.

I'm working with the center to create a written proposal for educating the local population on the humane treatment of dogs. Many Nepalis don't know how to treat animals; children regularly beat, kick, and throw stones at street dogs so KAT is working to change that. With the written proposal we hope to find additional financial support to put the program into place.

Currently the only method of controlling the dog population in Nepal involves mass poisoning-- the metropolitan authorities poison more than 10,000 dogs each year with strychnine. This is a horrific form of death, throwing the dogs into violent seizures for up to nine hours before they die. Poison is scattered around the streets in lumps of meat, which are later dispersed to wider areas after being picked up and dropped by birds. The poisoning campaigns not only endanger the stray dogs, but also children who play in the streets as well as peoples' pets. When the dogs die, their carcasses are often left to rot in the streets or dumped in a pile and left to decompose on stream beds. This poses additional hazards, including the pollution of water sources. After decades of poisoning dogs, it has been shown that this method is ineffective in the long term as the fertile stray population quickly recover their numbers.

These are a few of the dogs I fell in love with today.

Tara

The name "Tara" means "star" in Nepali. And Tara is a brave little star. She was rescued from the streets of Kathmandu 4 years ago--she had been hit by a car and was paralyzed from the waist down and had a horrible case of mange. Hers is the recurrent kind of mange, so unfortunately, it keeps coming back. She has a pair of wheels--like a doggie wheelchair--for moving herself around but her wheels don't really fit too well so she prefers to drag herself around using her front legs except that it creates massive open sores on her tail. She's very affectionate and will push herself up to you and nudge you with her nose to tell you when she wants to be petted. If you sit down on the ground she'll clumsily inch her way toward you until she manages to position her head in your lap for a nap.

Lola

Lola & Me

This is Lola. Well, we don't really know what her name is, but I named her that today and all of the staff at the KAT Centre loved the name. So, Lola, she is. Lola is a puppy. She was run over by a car when she was only a few weeks old and had to get her left arm amputated. But she's a happy little tyke and it doesn't seem to bother her too much. She's charming as can be and will steal your heart away within in seconds. Today she stole mine. I was very happy to find out that Lola already has a prospective family--an Australian expat family that lives in Kathmandu--so unlike the other dogs at KAT, she won't have to go back to the streets when she has healed from her operation.

My Precious Little Unnamed Project.

This little girl has no name. She's the weakest one of our dogs at the KAT centre. When she arrived a month ago she was practically starved and had a horrible case of mange. I can't imagine what she looked like a month ago because she looks pretty terrible still, but she is a sweet girl with a calm demeanor. I've taken a particular interest in her because no one else has--she looks so frightening with her open sores that she just lays alone in a corner all day and no one bothers her. But today I took her for a walk outside her pen and petted her and she seemed to really enjoy it. I need to get myself some plastic gloves so I can handle her more often, but it is my project to give her love and nurse her back to health.

Christmas is coming up, please consider donating to the KAT Centre on behalf of some one you love. For 10,000 Nepali Rupees, approximately $137 US dollars, you can sponsor a dog for an entire year. My little unamed girl still needs a sponsor. If you'd like to donate, please contact me or click here.

Sipadan Island, Borneo, Malaysia Oct 15-16, 2009

Sipadan Island

To see my videos of a sharks & barracudas, click here.

Giant Clams

Monitor Lizard & Malboro

A white tipped reef shark, Sipadan Island.

Swimming through a school of Jackfish.

Turtles!!

Sipadan, the prettiest aquarium you'll ever swim in.

Jackfish and Peoplefish.

Me, and a Green Turtle, Sipadan Island, Borneo, Sabah, Malaysia

“I have seen other places like Sipadan, 45 years ago, but now no more. Now we have found again an untouched piece of art…a jewel.”--Jacques Cousteau

The island of Sipadan lies 5 degrees north of the equator in the Sulawesi Sea (Celebes Sea). It is an oceanic island that was formed by living corals growing on top of an extinct undersea volcano that rises 600m from the seabed. The geographic position of Sipadan puts it in the center of the richest marine habitat in the world –the heart of the Indo-Pacific basin. More than 3000 species of fish and hundreds of coral species have been classified.

Yellow Trumpet Fish

Yellow Masked Angelfish

Moorish Idol

Diving Sipadan requires booking a permit way in advance because only 120 divers are allowed on Sipadan per day. It is well worth it! I dived Sipadan two days in a row. The first time I jumped off the boat and into the water I kept saying “wow” repeatedly, out loud, and through my regulator! I had never in my life seen so many and such varied fish.

Nudibranch (Varicose Wart Slug)

Clownfish

There was also this massive wall of coral that dropped vertically down into an unknown abyss. It was too easy to lose track of how deep we were because there was no visible floor and having a vertical wall of coral instead of a floor made it feel as though we were constantly free-falling. It was amazing!

The Vertical Wall of Coral

My favorite were the turtles—there were loads of them, swimming gracefully and peacefully through the waters. There were also small schools of white-tipped sharks—although they were small, and I knew they weren’t known to be dangerous to humans, they still looked like Jaws to me and I confess I was a little nervous to get too close. When I finally started feeling more at ease with the creatures I began to follow one to get a closer look, it made a sharp and unexpected turn and started swimming toward me and I nearly jumped out of my skin!

Harlequin Sweetlips

Stonefish-the most poisonous fish in the world.

Lionfish, a pretty poisonous fish too.