Whirling Phoenix's photostream

Hiking through Khao Yai National Park, the tropics grew in every direction. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the explosion of vegetation, just the unbridled growth and struggle for survival. The place, when viewed from a wide angle such as this, resembled to me a Darwinian battlefield, every organism striving to carve out a niche, pushing others away while clawing onto ones that might give it some modicum of advantage in this raucous scene. The whole jungle was a single living creature, a dance of life and death intertwined as we passed under its canopy.

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This valley is famous as the location of the black-crane migration from Tibet; they roost in this valley all winter, sometimes hundreds strong. Despite coming in late November, there were only a dozen or so cranes already present in the valley; I guess the memo hadn't gone out to the rest of the flock yet. The valley itself was gorgeous, small farms nestled against the higher hills and mountains that ring the ground. Autumn was turning everything golden, and our day there saw a storm cloud moving across over the mountain as the sun rose higher in the sky.

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As we approached the troupe of northern pig-tailed macaques (Macaca leonina) in Khao Yai National Park, Thailand, this brightly colored male thought we were too close, and was very vocal in his opposition to our presence. His colored face was beautiful and you can see those sharp canines giving us fair warning.

View it on my blog here: THAI10D-56

The climate at the Royal Botanical Garden in Bhutan is very diverse, but most of it resides in the mid-altitude cloud forest, a perpetually moist atmosphere which is ideal for large trees and huge sheets of lichen. Everywhere you turned in this park, the vegetation was covered in green frill, giving it an otherworldly (or even Middle Earth-y) appearance to the forest.

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Among the troupe of northern pig-tailed macaques (Macaca leonina) we came across in Khao Yai National Park, Thailand, this little baby was off to one side, watching the antics of his older relatives.

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