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

  source: German Archives 

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. ...

30 kg  fish caught at the  Singtam River I do not know how factual it is, but I have come across an article (could have been written a few years back) that says there is or was a suggested possibility of the existence of some kind of riverine mammals, like the fantasy of mermaids , or it could even be a Gangetic Dolphin in the regions from Rangpo and Singtam . I am from Singtam , but I have never heard of such a strange story apart from the  30 kg fish  that was caught at the bank of the  Singtam River last year. Thou sound fascinating, but I would love to read more about it. The information provided is from the desk of a WWF-India-Department of Science and Technology, Sikkim Project , and the researchers are Dr. Ajeya Jha , Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology , and Dr. R.K. Avasthe , Indian Council for Agricultural Research . The complete article is found on the website of the National Informatics Center, Sikkim , under the topic of Mammals of Sikkim ...