Tigers in India

Here's a post we did for The Wilderness Classroom on the state of tigers in India.  We visited Ranthambhore Reserve in Rajasthan, India and were lucky enough to see a tiger in the wild.  Check out this post to learn about these magnificent creatures.

Also, click here to see a post that Jamie and Jason did about tigers on their blog.

Irrawaddy River Dolphins and Endangered Animals

Here's a post we did on The Wilderness Classroom site about Irrawaddy river dolphins in the Mekong River, in Cambodia.  These are fascinating animals.  Click here to read more, and see a short video of the dolphins we saw.

Irrawaddy dolphin in Cambodia from Wikipedia. Foto: Stefan Brending / Lizenz: Creative Commons CC-by-sa-3.0 de

A Cambodia homestay

Jamie created this 3 1/2 minute video about the homestay we went on in Cambodia.  You can also see it on our kids' blog.

The homestay that Jamie describes in her video post was arranged for us by the Cambodian Rural Development Team.  In our short interactions, we were very impressed by this organization.  Their mission is “To improve food security, incomes, and living standards of subsistence rural communities while supporting environmental conservation throughout Cambodia.”  They seem to take a very practical and long-range approach to achieve their mission, with close coordination with local people.  Ecotourism is just one of their many projects, but it was obvious from the reception we received during our Koh Phdao homestay that the community really embraces CRDT’s efforts.  Koh Phdao was one of the cleanest and most welcoming places we visited in Cambodia, and Cambodia itself is a very friendly country.

If you’re considering a visit to Cambodia, or want to support a great local organization doing the right things in Southeast Asia, we recommend you connect with this group.

Study Guide Questions:

1. Can you name 2 of the 3 instruments you saw in the video?

2. We stayed in a stilt house.  Can you think of why all the houses on the island are built on stilts?

Itinerary change

We've made a few changes to our original itinerary.  We'll be leaving India in about a week and are then heading to South Africa.  I'll be attending the Climate Reality Project's training in Johannesburg, South Africa starting on March 12th.  This is the same training I went to in August last year, but this time I'll be attending as a mentor.

So we'll be going to South Africa, then Mozambique followed by a visit to Victoria Falls, which means we'll likely briefly touch Zimbabwe and Zambia.  Then it will be on to Botswana and Namibia, before finishing our time in Africa in Cape Town, South Africa.

We'll leave Africa towards the end of May and then we're heading to Italy, Spain, France (we're adding a stop in Paris), The Netherlands, and Norway.  We'll probably go to Svalbard (part of Norway) in the Arctic, in late July.