Proud to be a Sikkimese: Sikkim Travel, Culture & Local Heritage

A Sikkimese with a Shapi The two previous articles I wrote in my earlier edition on Shapi were wonderful to read for people around, and appreciation had been received from different corners of the state. I am thankful and find pleasure in people finding joy in my findings and research work. It was a bit surprising that very few had heard about Shapi, our rare legacy.  Nevertheless, I am happy to be part of history for re-introducing Shapi to those sections of my readers who had never heard about this old and sacred mountain mammal, a native of Sikkim. I dedicate my writing on Shapi to Ongden Daju (RO), who has been very supportive of me ever since I first published its first part a few months back. It was he who wanted me to continue with the third part of Shapi since more findings were evolving after my two writings. I shall always remain grateful to JR Subba, Jt Director from the Forest Department, for providing me with a valuable census report of Shapi done by the Department...

It was my good fortune to have visited the Forest Department Office at Deorali this summer and met officials out there. I shall remain appreciative of Ongden Daju (RO) for an occasion when I bring in contact with higher officials of the Forest Department. Apart from the reason for my presence in the Forest Department Office, I kept in mind that I would have some valuable information about Shapi, a topic that has been hovering around with me for some time now.  I was very pleased with the excitement on people’s faces when they went through a couple of photographs and a video of Shapi from the Schaefer Expedition. I was taken to the ENVIS office by Ongden Daju, where I came across Rajen Pradhan, Sr. Programme Officer (ENVIS), who was kind enough to share with issues of PANDA magazine, issued by the Forest Department, Government of Sikkim, for my personal collections. My wandering heart was more than pleased to find two separate articles published in the PANDA magazine in 1993 and in...

Shapi, the so-called living fossil, has been an exciting subject matter for me since it was first documented in Sikkim some seventy years back. I have been looking for information on Shapi for the last couple of years but with little success.  Very little has been written about this rare animal that is regarded as older than deer, goat, and sheep. Considered a rare species and one of the most precious assets of Sikkim, this mammal was first discovered by  Ernst Schäfer, a German doctor, on an expedition in 1938 in Fimphu, North Sikkim.  I should not forget Margreth Paech from Germany, with whom I had an exchange of emails about the discovery of Shapi made by the German Expedition team led by Ernst Schaefer in 1938. She was generous enough to help me in my research by sending photographs of Shapi from the German Archives related to the Ernst Schäfer Expedition, which helped me take a glimpse of that historic discovery. I looked on the internet for information about Shapi. ...