EDITORIAL - JULY 2008
One nice thing about monsoon is lots of time to read. It is not a good time to go to the jungle to spot wildlife—too wet, nor to the hills for any other animal viewing—too wet. But, it is a good time to read about Nepal’s varied and exotic wildlife, and make plans for a wildlife safari in the jungle after the rain stops.

We have some good reading for you this month, especially on wildlife. Our cover feature (by Amendra Pokharel), discusses the ups and downs and modest return of some of the nation’s most interesting wild critters. We’ve added a tale about a rambunctious sloth bear in Chitwan (by Ravi Singh) and an overview of the career of wildlife photographer Sanu Raja Vajracharya (by Ivan Sada).

More ‘Lore of the jungle’ is presented in excerpts from Hemanta Mishra’s new book, The Soul of the Rhino. The three short pieces we’ve printed here are indicative of Hemanta’s fine story telling, and may tempt you to buy the book. It is formally reviewed in Page Turner, and is expected to appear in downtown bookstores soon.

Early in the last century, a British railroad worker named Jim Corbett made fame tracking and killing a number of man-eating tigers and leopards in the hills directly west of Nepal. At first his notoriety was local, but when he began writing books his exploits became popular worldwide. I know, because I first read all of Corbett’s books decades ago. Beginning with Man-Eaters of Kumaon (1944), they are still in print in various editions. I recently bought the Oxford Corbett Omnibus collection in Kathmandu so I could revisit them all. I am all the more encouraged to reread them by the article submitted by our occasional contributor, Neale Bates, who tells the grand story of the old colonial hunter in ‘Tracking Man-Eaters: The Jim Corbett Story’.

There’s also a short study of how early explorers, diplomats, missionaries and spies met the ubiquitous Tibetan mastiff dogs in shepherd and nomad camps on sojourns through the Himalayas and across Tibet. These big canines are not ‘wildlife’, per se, but from the harrowing accounts those earlier travelers wrote, they were known to react in wild and fearsome ways at the sight of strangers. See ‘Bhote Kukur and the Nepaul Dog’.

For Adventure Sports (as if wildlife spotting is not enough), Wei Yang has written ‘Caving’, all about spelunking, a new sport in Nepal. The nearest cave to Kathmandu is at Chhobar, where the Bagmati River cuts its way out of the valley (near Kirtipur). Also from that side of the valley, we have a feature article by Utsav Shakya about the recent Rato Matsyendranath festival in Patan. As he describes it, and we’ve seen it, this annual chariot event is sometimes quite ‘wild’.

The Spilled Ink column has been turned over this month to Kathmandu writer Sushma Joshi, a steady contributor to ECS magazine. Sushma describes for us the pleasures and the pains of co-editing New Nepal, New Voices (with Ajit Baral), a grand collection of writings. (If you are a writer, and want to spill some ink with us, let us know.) In her regular column, Art Matters, Sushma describes several artsy books she found on a recent stroll along the Jyatha/Thamel book beat.

Besides all this we have our regular People, Places, Events, Notice Board and Calendar, all for your reading pleasure. And be sure to check out our web pages at www.ecs.com.np.

Enjoy the season for reading—too wet to do much else!

Don Messerschmidt
Associate Editor
Email: don.editor@gmail.com