In Woolsery the effects of global climate change are beginning to make themselves obvious. It’s midsummer and the garden should be a riot of colour basking in glorious sunshine, but it’s not. The sky is a steely grey, and though not exactly a gale, gusty winds are buffeting the tall trees around the CFZ grounds. Half past ten in the morning, and Graham, Corinna and I are desperately wondering how – in just three days – we can transform the garden into something slightly presentable in time for our Open Day on Saturday. At the moment, it looks like a Shakespearian blasted heath that has been tended by a family of alcoholic badgers hell-bent on building some kind of mustelid theme park.
The telephone rings. I answer it, mildly bad temperedly, and am greeted with a burst of exotic music and an excited female voice jabbering in an unfamiliar language. These days as we tend to become the target for various global telemarketing campaigns, this is not as unlikely an event as it might sound, but I recognise the word “Nalchik” and I realise – that for better or for worse – this telephone call is going to be important. It is less than 24 hours since – after a week of dithering – Channel 4 finally pulled out of the expedition, and I have to admit that my first paranoid thought is that this is a phone call from the Russian authorities telling me that my judgement had been completely wrong and that something horrible had happened to one or more of the CFZ expeditionary team. As Steve Ignorant once told me, just because they say you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that you’re not stored on their computers. However, my paranoia, was – thankfully – unjustified as I realised when the cheerful voice of Adam Davies calling me on a ridiculously primitive Russian payphone crackled into my ear.
The first thing that he assured me is that all members of the team are safe, healthy and well. The only injury so far has been Adam himself who, whilst climbing some treacherous rocks, slipped and fell 10 feet, tearing his trousers. Even Richard is unusually chipper as despite a day of gruelling climbing thousands of feet up mountainous rock faces to a cave where almasty have reportedly been seen, and – as far as I can gather – from whence Grigory Panchenko obtained both skull fragments and samples of scat, and in Adam’s words “Richard for once does not have the wooden spoon for being the least healthy member of the expedition – apparently on this occasion the booby prize goes to Keith who had most difficulty negotiating the unforgiving terrain”.
They explored the caves yesterday, which are at a place called White Rock, near Tyrnyauz and have set up camera traps in the caves. At the moment we have no information as to how recent the scat samples are, but presumably local people believe that the caves are inhabited by the almasty. Grigory has given the bone and scat samples to the boys and he believes that they are genuine, although he has asked Adam to stress to me that he is not prepared to accept them as firm evidence until they have been analysed.
Today, as far as I can gather, (and you have to remember that this report is gleaned from two very brief crackly telephone conversations, each lasting well under 3 minutes, so I don’t have all the answers), half the team have climbed back up to the caves to check the camera traps, whilst Adam, presumably having repaired his trousers, and Dave have been filming an interview with an eyewitness who claimed to have found an almasty body in 1996. There wasn’t time for me to get a full description, but Adam told me of his surprise at hearing that the female corpse reportedly had a ‘conical’ head like that of a yeti. The team will be staying in and about Tyrnyauz for a few more days before embarking into the mountainous regions near Mount Elbrus hopefully to exhume the cadaver.
Adam tells us that the countryside in Karbadino Balkaria is absolutely gorgeous. They are encountering a lot of the local wildlife. It was whilst chasing a wild cat that Adam sustained such serious damage to his nether garments. Each night they can hear the cries of the wild jackals, and each day they are privileged to see eagles soaring high above them in the clear blue sky.
Because of the problems that our erstwhile film crew had getting a visa and because of the worrying postings on the Foreign Office website, I had to ask Adam whether he and the team had seen any signs of the Nalchik area being a hotbed of terrorism and a potentially lethal war zone. Adam laughed. Yes, there are armed police roadblocks which is a bit concerting when you come from England, but you see those all over the world. “In my opinion, and you can quote me on this, I think we have more chance of seeing the almasty performing in a Las Vegas cabaret than we have of being seriously affected by any kind of terrorist activity here in Russian”.
More news when we get it.
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
Richard on Human evolution
Until we have some more firm news, here is a taster - Richard talking about Human evolution and its impact on the trip...
Alarums and Excursions
We have had no internet for the past 36 hours so I haven't been able to update at all. The main news is that Channel 4 have pulled out of the expedition. The Russian Government apparently refused to grant a visa to the film crew. The area of the expedition is perilously close to Chechnya and other trouble spots for their liking, and they are afraid of an anti-Russian documentary being made by the folks in what is euphemistically described as the free world.
So we are on our own.
So we are on our own.
Sunday, 22 June 2008
DAY ONE: Arrival, bone samples, terror alerts
Adam Davies telephoned us from Nalchik airport. All the team have arrived in Kabardino Balkaria safe and sound, with their baggage and equipment intact, and furthermore, they have liased as arranged with Grigoriy Panchenko and his colleagues who have been doing advance research in the region for the last two weeks.
Excitingly it appears that Panchenko and his compadres have already secured some faecal samples, as well as some bone fragments supposedly from a skull which may be of an almasty. Back here at Mission Control in North Devon I cannot comment further on these potentially exciting finds because I have no idea what their provenance is, and the telephone call with Adam didn't last long enough to find out.
They are leaving Nalchik now, and heading for Tyrnyauz in the mountains which will provide a base for operations for the next few days. All that we can do at this stage is to speculate, but the Foreign and Commenwealth Office [FCO] website has warned Britons against travelling to the area. Richard and the boys decided to ignore that warning, believing - after long talks with Grigoriy - that the risks were being over-stated. However, it makes sense for them to put as much distance between them and Nalchik, where a major terrorist attack took place in 2005.
According to the FCO, "In July 2007 fighters linked to the rebel cells in Chechnya and elsewhere in the North Caucasus issued generic statements warning tourists not to visit Kabardino-Balkaria, listing casinos, hotels and bars as legitimate targets for terrorist-style activity". In October 2007, 59 suspects were put on trial for the 2005 atrocities. The main revolutionary group in Kabardino Balkaria appears to be a militant Islamic organisation called Yarmuk Jamaat who were responsible for the assasination of Anatoly Kyarov, the head of the Russia's Kabardino-Balkaria republic's UBOP (Unit for Fighting Organized Crime). He was assassinated on January 12, 2008 in Nalchik.
Panchenko and his colleagues have been working out of Tyrnyauz for 14 years now and have their own network of supporters, so the team will be safe when they get there.
We will be happier when we hear that the team have arrived safely, although we believe, after having talked at length with Grigoriy Panchenko, that there is no real need to worry, and every likelihood that the CFZ expedition will be able to carry out their search for evidence for the almasty - the enigmatic wildman of the Caucasus mountains - unhindered.
Excitingly it appears that Panchenko and his compadres have already secured some faecal samples, as well as some bone fragments supposedly from a skull which may be of an almasty. Back here at Mission Control in North Devon I cannot comment further on these potentially exciting finds because I have no idea what their provenance is, and the telephone call with Adam didn't last long enough to find out.
They are leaving Nalchik now, and heading for Tyrnyauz in the mountains which will provide a base for operations for the next few days. All that we can do at this stage is to speculate, but the Foreign and Commenwealth Office [FCO] website has warned Britons against travelling to the area. Richard and the boys decided to ignore that warning, believing - after long talks with Grigoriy - that the risks were being over-stated. However, it makes sense for them to put as much distance between them and Nalchik, where a major terrorist attack took place in 2005.
According to the FCO, "In July 2007 fighters linked to the rebel cells in Chechnya and elsewhere in the North Caucasus issued generic statements warning tourists not to visit Kabardino-Balkaria, listing casinos, hotels and bars as legitimate targets for terrorist-style activity". In October 2007, 59 suspects were put on trial for the 2005 atrocities. The main revolutionary group in Kabardino Balkaria appears to be a militant Islamic organisation called Yarmuk Jamaat who were responsible for the assasination of Anatoly Kyarov, the head of the Russia's Kabardino-Balkaria republic's UBOP (Unit for Fighting Organized Crime). He was assassinated on January 12, 2008 in Nalchik.
Panchenko and his colleagues have been working out of Tyrnyauz for 14 years now and have their own network of supporters, so the team will be safe when they get there.
We will be happier when we hear that the team have arrived safely, although we believe, after having talked at length with Grigoriy Panchenko, that there is no real need to worry, and every likelihood that the CFZ expedition will be able to carry out their search for evidence for the almasty - the enigmatic wildman of the Caucasus mountains - unhindered.
By the way...
Those of you expecting Redfer's witticisms and commentary will still be sorely disappointed as it appears their power is still out...
Thunderbirds are go!
I received a telephone call at just after 3.00am. The boys have arrived in Russia and have succesfully been passed through Immigration. There was some question whether this would actually happen, and we were all worried that they would be turnbed back at Moscow. They leave for Kabardino Balkaria in about fifteen minutes (1.00pm GMT) and will be landing later today.
More news when we get it.
More news when we get it.
Richard's final statement before the expedition left...
So, it’s the eve of another CFZ expedition, this time behind the iron curtain. I’m never at rest before an expedition. I can only feel easy when we are actually in the field. I’m often asked what worries me most about these endeavours in far-flung places. The answer is all the burocracy and hold ups getting there. Late flights and red tape worry me more than diseases or beast attacks.
We are playing with the big boys this time. We have funding from Channel 4 (after years of struggling for support it’s great to be financed at last) and the support of Professor Bryan Sykes, the world’s leading geneticist.
We have looked for mystery primates before but the Almasty seems to be a form of man, however bestial it may appear. More man-like than the yeti or Sasquatch, this may be our closest living relative, a creature of the genus Homo rather than a pongid. If the Almasty is a primitive man, perhaps a surviving form of Homo erectus then it begets a whole set of biological and ethical problems. Where does it fit on the tree of life? Will it be afforded the same rights as Homo sapiens? Would a creature with no fire or culture and only basic tool use be looked on in the same was as the ‘lost tribes’ who have had no contact with ‘civilized’ man? Would the almasty’s discovery be its death knell at the hands of it’s younger evolutionary brother?
Professor Sykes has asked us to take DNA samples of the local populace. All over the world there are stories of hominids interbreeding with modern man. Last year in Guyana we heard a story of a di-di siering a hybrid child with a human woman. Identical stories are told in North America and Nepal. If any modern humans have hominid gene in their ansestory it should stick out like a sore thumb in their DNA?
Kabardino Balkaria is almost unknown in the west. I’d never heard of it until I stumbled across an article on Grigory Panchenko’s research a couple of years ago. All the other places the CFZ expeditions have taken me I have known something about. This time I know next to nothing and have no pre-conceptions.
We are playing with the big boys this time. We have funding from Channel 4 (after years of struggling for support it’s great to be financed at last) and the support of Professor Bryan Sykes, the world’s leading geneticist.
We have looked for mystery primates before but the Almasty seems to be a form of man, however bestial it may appear. More man-like than the yeti or Sasquatch, this may be our closest living relative, a creature of the genus Homo rather than a pongid. If the Almasty is a primitive man, perhaps a surviving form of Homo erectus then it begets a whole set of biological and ethical problems. Where does it fit on the tree of life? Will it be afforded the same rights as Homo sapiens? Would a creature with no fire or culture and only basic tool use be looked on in the same was as the ‘lost tribes’ who have had no contact with ‘civilized’ man? Would the almasty’s discovery be its death knell at the hands of it’s younger evolutionary brother?
Professor Sykes has asked us to take DNA samples of the local populace. All over the world there are stories of hominids interbreeding with modern man. Last year in Guyana we heard a story of a di-di siering a hybrid child with a human woman. Identical stories are told in North America and Nepal. If any modern humans have hominid gene in their ansestory it should stick out like a sore thumb in their DNA?
Kabardino Balkaria is almost unknown in the west. I’d never heard of it until I stumbled across an article on Grigory Panchenko’s research a couple of years ago. All the other places the CFZ expeditions have taken me I have known something about. This time I know next to nothing and have no pre-conceptions.
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