Brett Jenks, Rare’s CEO, blogs about his trip to Asia, where he visited Pride campaigns taking place in China and Indonesia. Follow Brett’s adventures as he witnesses local conservation efforts to protect endangered species in Asia and shares how the Pride campaign model can support lasting conservation impact in this part of the world.

We reluctantly left Yongzhi Village early in the morning.

After the welcoming we received, the traditional dancing in the evening, and the fact that our campaign and the four pilot green homes are just getting started, it would have been nice to stick around a few months and chip in to make this project happen, but we have a four hour drive to the foothills of Mt. Kawagebo and then a five hour hike up the side of Mt. Kawagebo.

It was time to get going.

Yak butter tea, a staple for the Tibetan people living at the base of Mt. Kawagebo, is an acquired taste for some outsiders.

Over breakfast, Mr. Ma told us that the Yongzhi community center where we sat for three hours the evening before is on the verge of being condemned. The roof is caving in and community members have pooled about $5,000 to rebuild it using green building methods, but they need another $3500 to finish the job. Together, our party commits to asking friends and family to contribute to help them finish the project.

This will be a great way to give something back to such a wonderful people and continue the process of building sustainable technologies into traditional Tibetan construction practices.

If you’d like to contribute, please click here. Rare will collect the funding and pass through 100% of the funds raised. Just make sure you specify that your funds are for the Yongzhi Green Community Center.

Leaving Yongzhi. A road less traveled, but one I hope never gets paved.

Nigel and Mr. Ma point the way for our hike up to Yubeng Village. You can see the route of our hike just by following the light blue trail to the top and then heading right all the way to the top of the treeline.

At the top of the first peak, around 4000 feet, we met a Buddhist monk from Yebong Village, headed out of town as we prepared to finish the hike to town. (Photo by Nigel Sizer)

As it turned out, we started climbing the mountain too late in the day, and we had to spend the last hour hiking in darkness to Lower Yebong Village. This turned into a comedy of errors. Only a few of us had flashlights.

Mr. Ma barely knew the way, we were at about 3500 meters, it was below freezing, we had been hiking and sweating for four hours, and we were giddy and exhausted. At one point, Mr. Ma suggested we take a short cut across a pasture, and we all dutifully began climbing a fence in the dark.

Then Lei and Lingang noticed a traditional log ladder which we all used to climb onto an adjacent path. (The next day, we found that the one really tough looking bull in the whole village was standing alone in that pitch black pasture and would probably have had a less warm greeting for us than our Tibetan friends.)

>>Brett’s Slideshow

>>Rare Pride in Action at Meili Snow Mountain Nature Reserve!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 3:18 pm and is filed under Pride. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.