Blue Sheep
The bharal (''Pseudois nayaur''), also called the blue sheep, is a caprine native to the high Himalayas. It is the only member of the genus ''Pseudois.'' It occurs in Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, and in China in the provinces of Gansu, Ningxia, Sichuan, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia. The Helan Mountains of Ningxia have the highest concentration of bharal in the world, with 15 bharals per km2 and 30,000 in total. Its native names include ''yanyang'' (岩羊) in Mandarin, ''bharal'', ''barhal'', ''bharar'', and ''bharut'' in Hindi, ''na'' or ''sna'' in Tibetan and Ladakh, ''nabo'' in Spitian, ''naur'' in Nepali and ''na'' or ''gnao'' in Bhutan. The bharal was also the focus of George Schaller and Peter Matthiessen's expedition to Nepal in 1973. Their personal experiences are well documented by Matthiessen in his book, ''The Snow Leopard''. The bharal is a major prey of the snow leopard. Description These medium-sized caprids are long along the head-and-body, with a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Spiti Valley
Spiti (pronounced as piti in Bhoti language) is a high-altitude region of the Himalayas, located in the north-eastern part of the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. The name "Spiti" means "The middle land", i.e. the land between Tibet and India. Spiti incorporates mainly the valley of the Spiti River, and the valleys of several rivers that feed into the Spiti River. Some of the prominent side-valleys in Spiti are the Pin valley and the Lingti valley. Spiti is bordered on the east by Tibet, on the north by Ladakh, on the west and southwest by Lahaul, on the south by Kullu, and on the southeast by Kinnaur. Spiti has a cold desert environment. The valley and its surrounding regions are among the least populated regions of India. The Bhoti-speaking local population follows Tibetan Buddhism. Traditionally, agriculture was for subsistence, but has shifted to cash crops in the past few decades. Spiti is a popular destination for photography, snow leopard spotting, and ad ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Ningxia
Ningxia, officially the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region in Northwestern China. Formerly a province, Ningxia was incorporated into Gansu in 1954 but was later separated from Gansu in 1958 and reconstituted as an autonomous region for the Hui people, one of the 56 officially recognised nationalities of China. Twenty percent of China's Hui population lives in Ningxia. Ningxia is bounded by Shaanxi to the east, Gansu to the south and west and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to the north and has an area of around . This sparsely settled, mostly desert region lies partially on the Loess Plateau and in the vast plain of the Yellow River and features the Great Wall of China along its northeastern boundary. Over about 2000 years, an extensive system of canals (with a total length of approximately 1397 kilometers) has been built from Qin dynasty. Extensive land reclamation and irrigation projects have made increased cultivation possible. The arid region of Xihaig ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Bundesarchiv Bild 135-S-06-24-35, Tibetexpedition, Erlegter Blauschafwidder
The German Federal Archives or Bundesarchiv (BArch) (, lit. "Federal Archive") are the national archives of Germany. They were established at the current location in Koblenz in 1952. They are subordinated to the Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media (Claudia Roth since 2021) under the German Chancellery, and before 1998, to the Federal Ministry of the Interior. On 6 December 2008, the Archives donated 100,000 photos to the public, by making them accessible via Wikimedia Commons. History The federal archive for institutions and authorities in Germany, the first precursor to the present-day Federal Archives, was established in Potsdam, Brandenburg in 1919, a later date than in other European countries. This national archive documented German government dating from the founding of the North German Confederation in 1867. It also included material from the older German Confederation and the Imperial Chamber Court. The oldest documents in this collection dated back to the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Snow Leopard
The snow leopard (''Panthera uncia'') is a species of large cat in the genus ''Panthera'' of the family Felidae. The species is native to the mountain ranges of Central and South Asia. It is listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List because the global population is estimated to number fewer than 10,000 mature individuals and is expected to decline about 10% by 2040. It is mainly threatened by poaching and habitat destruction following infrastructural developments. It inhabits alpine and subalpine zones at elevations of , ranging from eastern Afghanistan, the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau to southern Siberia, Mongolia and western China. In the northern part of its range, it also lives at lower elevations. Taxonomically, the snow leopard was long classified in the monotypic genus ''Uncia''. Since phylogenetic studies revealed the relationships among ''Panthera'' species, it has since been considered a member of that genus. Two subspecies were described based on morpho ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Peter Matthiessen
Peter Matthiessen (May 22, 1927 – April 5, 2014) was an American novelist, naturalist, wilderness writer, zen teacher and onetime CIA agent. A co-founder of the literary magazine ''The Paris Review'', he is the only writer to have won the National Book Award in both National Book Award for Nonfiction, nonfiction (''The Snow Leopard'', 1979, category Contemporary Thought) and National Book Award for Fiction, fiction (''Shadow Country'', 2008)."Washington Post Obituary" Obituary, Washington Post, April 6, 2014. He was also a prominent environmental activist. Matthiessen's nonfiction featured nature and travel, notably ''The Snow Leopard'' (1978) and Native Americans i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
George Schaller
George Beals Schaller (born 26 May 1933) is an American mammalogist, biologist, conservationist and author. Schaller is recognized by many as the world's preeminent field biologist, studying wildlife throughout Africa, Asia and South America. Born in Berlin, Schaller grew up in Germany, but moved to Missouri as a teen. He is vice president of Panthera Corporation and serves as chairman of their Cat Advisory Council. Schaller is also a senior conservationist at the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society. Early life Schaller was born in Berlin, Germany. He received his Bachelor of Biological Science degree from the University of Alaska in 1955, and went on to the University of Wisconsin–Madison to obtain his PhD in 1962. From 1962 to 1963, he was a fellow at the Behavioral Sciences department of Stanford University. From 1963 to 1966, Schaller served as research associate for the Johns Hopkins University pathobiology department, and from 1966 to 1972, served as the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Nepali Language
Nepali (; , ), or ''Gorkhali'' is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language native to the Himalayas region of South Asia. It is the official and most widely spoken Languages of Nepal, language of Nepal, where it also serves as a ''lingua franca''. Nepali has Languages with official status in India, official status in the Indian state of Sikkim and in the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration of West Bengal. It is spoken by about a quarter of Bhutan's population. Nepali also has a significant number of speakers in the Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Uttarakhand. In Myanmar it is spoken by the Burmese Gurkhas. The Nepali diaspora in the Middle East, Brunei, Australia and worldwide also use the language. Nepali is spoken by approximately 19 million native speakers and another 14 million as a second language. Nepali is commonly classified within the Eastern Pahari group of the Northern Indo-Aryan languages, Northern zo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Spiti Valley
Spiti (pronounced as piti in Bhoti language) is a high-altitude region of the Himalayas, located in the north-eastern part of the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. The name "Spiti" means "The middle land", i.e. the land between Tibet and India. Spiti incorporates mainly the valley of the Spiti River, and the valleys of several rivers that feed into the Spiti River. Some of the prominent side-valleys in Spiti are the Pin valley and the Lingti valley. Spiti is bordered on the east by Tibet, on the north by Ladakh, on the west and southwest by Lahaul, on the south by Kullu, and on the southeast by Kinnaur. Spiti has a cold desert environment. The valley and its surrounding regions are among the least populated regions of India. The Bhoti-speaking local population follows Tibetan Buddhism. Traditionally, agriculture was for subsistence, but has shifted to cash crops in the past few decades. Spiti is a popular destination for photography, snow leopard spotting, and ad ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Ladakh
Ladakh () is a region administered by India as a union territory and constitutes an eastern portion of the larger Kashmir region that has been the subject of a Kashmir#Kashmir dispute, dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947 and India and China since 1959.The application of the term "administered" to the various regions of Kashmir and a mention of the Kashmir dispute is supported by the WP:TERTIARY, tertiary sources (a) through (e), reflecting WP:DUE, due weight in the coverage. Although "controlled" and "held" are also applied neutrally to the names of the disputants or to the regions administered by them, as evidenced in sources (h) through (i) below, "held" is also considered politicised usage, as is the term "occupied", (see (j) below). (a) (subscription required) Quote: "Kashmir, region of the northwestern Indian subcontinent ... has been the subject of dispute between India and Pakistan since the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. The northern and wester ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Hindi
Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government of India, alongside English language, English, and is the ''lingua franca'' of North India. Hindi is considered a Sanskritisation (linguistics), Sanskritised Register (sociolinguistics), register of Hindustani. Hindustani itself developed from Old Hindi and was spoken in Delhi and neighbouring areas. It incorporated a significant number of Persian language, Persian loanwords. Hindi is an Languages with official status in India, official language in twelve states (Bihar, Gujarat , Mizoram , Maharashtra ,Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand), and six Union territory, union territories (Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Delhi, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Di ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Mandarin Chinese
Mandarin ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l=Mandarin (bureaucrat), officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretches from Yunnan in the southwest to Xinjiang in the northwest and Heilongjiang in the northeast. Its spread is generally attributed to the greater ease of travel and communication in the North China Plain compared to the more mountainous south, combined with the relatively recent spread of Mandarin to frontier areas. Many varieties of Mandarin, such as Southwestern Mandarin, those of the Southwest (including Sichuanese dialects, Sichuanese) and the Lower Yangtze Mandarin, Lower Yangtze, are not mutually intelligible with the Beijing dialect (or are only partially intelligible). Nevertheless, Mandarin as a group is often placed first in lists of languages by number of native speakers (with nearly one billion). Because Mandarin originated in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Helan Mountains
The Helan Mountains, frequently called Alashan Mountains in older sources, are an isolated desert mountain range forming the border of Inner Mongolia's Alxa League and Ningxia. They run north-south parallel to the north-flowing Yellow River in the Ordos Loop section. The river is mostly east of the mountains, but in the north it crosses without making a significant gorge and flows on the west side. To the west lies the extremely arid Tengger Desert, while to the east is an irrigated area beside the Yellow River, in which lie the cities of Yinchuan and Shizuishan - a little further east of which lies the Mu Us portion of the Ordos Desert. To the north lies the Inner Mongolian city of Wuhai. They are about from north to south, from wide and average about in altitude (the Yellow River here is about above sea level). Their highest peak is . Emerging wine industry With the increasing popularity of Ningxia wines, the Chinese authorities have given approval to the developmen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |