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Beyond the Last Village: a Journey of Discovery in Asia's Forbidden Wilderness
This book is about exploration, danger, and discovery in a remote area of the planet where the greatest necessity is salt, where people plow the earth using themselves as the beasts of burden, and where the main source of meat is a group of primitive species that are little known outside the region. In 1993 Alan Rabinowitz, called "the Indiana Jones" of wildlife science by the New York Times, first set foot in Myanmar, the country known until 1989 as Burma, hoping to survey the country's wildlife and convince the government to establish protected natural areas. In the event-filled years that followed, as the Myanmar government allowed Rabinowitz and his Wildlife Conservation Society team to travel to increasingly remote areas, he succeeded beyond all expectations, not only discovering species new to science but also playing a vital role in wildlife preservation, including the creation of Hkakabo Razi National Park, now one of Southeast Asia's largest protected areas.
300 pages
First published August 1, 2001
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386 people want to read
About the author
Alan Rabinowitz
35 books54 followersAlan Robert Rabinowitz was an American zoologist, conservationist, field biologist and the CEO of Panthera, a nonprofit conservation organization devoted to protecting the world's 37 wild cat species. Called the "Indiana Jones of Wildlife Protection" by Time, Rabinowitz has studied jaguars, clouded leopards, Asiatic leopards, tigers, Sumatran rhinos, bears, leopard cats, raccoons, and civets. Today, Rabinowitz’s work focused on conserving the world’s largest, most imperiled cats—tigers, lions, jaguars, and snow leopards—and their habitats.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
June 17, 2014
This was another great book to read by Dr. Alan Rabinowitz. In this book, Alan is in Myanmar doing research on the animals that are living in the region of the Hkakabo Razi National Park. Most of the story takes place with Alan and a team of animal and plant biologist, on a tracking expedition towards the Himalayan Mountains. While on the trip, the team meets some villagers that makes a lasting effect on Alan.
There is a more personal story than in Alan's previous book "Chasing the Dragon's tail." In this book, Alan has married and struggling with what is best for his life as a married man. His wife is wanting to start a family but, Alan, isn't sure if he wants to have kids because of his traumatic childhood that he had. But during his journey, he meets two villagers named Dawi and Htawgyi, that helps Alan decide what he really wants in his life.
There is a more personal story than in Alan's previous book "Chasing the Dragon's tail." In this book, Alan has married and struggling with what is best for his life as a married man. His wife is wanting to start a family but, Alan, isn't sure if he wants to have kids because of his traumatic childhood that he had. But during his journey, he meets two villagers named Dawi and Htawgyi, that helps Alan decide what he really wants in his life.
March 5, 2020
An interesting, but also a frustrating book in a number of ways.
The context and description of visits to northern Myanmar (and to a lesser extent to other parts of the country) is fascinating and rare external view of the country from a perspective that is not focused on political aspects. Similarly the points where it touches on the complexities of engaging with the authorities in Myanmar are fascinating for the same reasons. However, this leads to one of the frustrations I had - that some of those interesting elements are rather underplayed. I also felt that a more serious criticism is the author's tendency to centre his own views and narratives. Yes, this is a very personal account, but at the same time what must have been a considerable amount of work - intellectual, administrative, and logistical, by locals - both Rabinowitz's own colleagues and others - is barely acknowledged.
A similarly dismissive or uncaring attitude towards the locals sometimes seems apparent in the author's descriptions of his interactions with them. For instance, he recounts that none of the military escort that the expedition were required to take liked the task of having to stick to him through a day's trek because he walked faster than they wished to. Over the following chapters it becomes clear that rather than make any attempt to accommodate the others or discuss the matter he simply did what he wished to and at times either deliberately or simply unthinkingly went out of his way to make the escort's life difficult by forcing the pace. At times this attitude seems to slip into an almost colonial belief in western intellectual supremacy and, indeed, whose observations count. For example, the author writes "Sadly, alchemy never evolved into modern Chemistry in Myanmar as it did in Europe. Instead, chemistry was brought from the West with the British conquest, while alchemy lived on as a superstitious practice among a small group of monks within Myanmar." Similarly he refers to being the first people to observe certain animals or things in Myanmar - while describing how local hunters brought these animals to him and shared their knowledge of the wildlife. He also seems surprised that local authorities and researchers were upset that he took it on himself to name a new species without any sort of consultation or discussion - simply assuming that he had the right.
In the descriptions of the various peoples living in northern Myanmar, a degree of generalisation is probably inevitable, but at times the narrative to me slides into stereotyping. Again, the colonial overtones are problematic in such ethnographic descriptions.
This is, as noted above, a very personal account. Unfortunately for me that personal dimension was one of the least successful aspects of the book. I found the attempt to merge the sections about the author's own life and history with the account of trips to Myanmar jarring. The attempt did not make me care about his own inner journey or life and I did not find that these insertions enriched the descriptions of the environment and peoples of Myanmar who do not need the validation of comparison or contributing to an outsiders inner journey to be of interest. Overall my abiding reaction to these sections was annoyance and pity for his wife, whose views, voice, concerns, and desires he seemed to consider uninteresting (at best) and certainly irrelevant when it came to his own actions and behaviour. There were certainly points when I found myself thinking that if I were a friend of his wife's I would have advised her to leave the marriage and I certainly had little patience for detailed descriptions of imaginary maunderings about whether she might choose to leave him.
Having said all that, there was enough of interest in this book to keep me reading, despite the frustrations. It strikes a reasonable balance in terms of presenting enough scientific information to be interesting without that becoming overwhelming or confusing.
The context and description of visits to northern Myanmar (and to a lesser extent to other parts of the country) is fascinating and rare external view of the country from a perspective that is not focused on political aspects. Similarly the points where it touches on the complexities of engaging with the authorities in Myanmar are fascinating for the same reasons. However, this leads to one of the frustrations I had - that some of those interesting elements are rather underplayed. I also felt that a more serious criticism is the author's tendency to centre his own views and narratives. Yes, this is a very personal account, but at the same time what must have been a considerable amount of work - intellectual, administrative, and logistical, by locals - both Rabinowitz's own colleagues and others - is barely acknowledged.
A similarly dismissive or uncaring attitude towards the locals sometimes seems apparent in the author's descriptions of his interactions with them. For instance, he recounts that none of the military escort that the expedition were required to take liked the task of having to stick to him through a day's trek because he walked faster than they wished to. Over the following chapters it becomes clear that rather than make any attempt to accommodate the others or discuss the matter he simply did what he wished to and at times either deliberately or simply unthinkingly went out of his way to make the escort's life difficult by forcing the pace. At times this attitude seems to slip into an almost colonial belief in western intellectual supremacy and, indeed, whose observations count. For example, the author writes "Sadly, alchemy never evolved into modern Chemistry in Myanmar as it did in Europe. Instead, chemistry was brought from the West with the British conquest, while alchemy lived on as a superstitious practice among a small group of monks within Myanmar." Similarly he refers to being the first people to observe certain animals or things in Myanmar - while describing how local hunters brought these animals to him and shared their knowledge of the wildlife. He also seems surprised that local authorities and researchers were upset that he took it on himself to name a new species without any sort of consultation or discussion - simply assuming that he had the right.
In the descriptions of the various peoples living in northern Myanmar, a degree of generalisation is probably inevitable, but at times the narrative to me slides into stereotyping. Again, the colonial overtones are problematic in such ethnographic descriptions.
This is, as noted above, a very personal account. Unfortunately for me that personal dimension was one of the least successful aspects of the book. I found the attempt to merge the sections about the author's own life and history with the account of trips to Myanmar jarring. The attempt did not make me care about his own inner journey or life and I did not find that these insertions enriched the descriptions of the environment and peoples of Myanmar who do not need the validation of comparison or contributing to an outsiders inner journey to be of interest. Overall my abiding reaction to these sections was annoyance and pity for his wife, whose views, voice, concerns, and desires he seemed to consider uninteresting (at best) and certainly irrelevant when it came to his own actions and behaviour. There were certainly points when I found myself thinking that if I were a friend of his wife's I would have advised her to leave the marriage and I certainly had little patience for detailed descriptions of imaginary maunderings about whether she might choose to leave him.
Having said all that, there was enough of interest in this book to keep me reading, despite the frustrations. It strikes a reasonable balance in terms of presenting enough scientific information to be interesting without that becoming overwhelming or confusing.
June 22, 2013
I found this in a local bookshop. I travelled to Kachin, the northernmost state of Myanmar, in 2010 and it was one of the best trips I've ever made. I still like to think back to staying in the village at Indawgyi lake, where it had been weeks since the last tourist visited, and the state capital Myitkyina, where one and two-storey buildings still dominate and part of the booming city really looks more like a forest with a few buildings in between. I was aware of the option of going to Putao with infrequent flights that are of course quite expensive.
Alan Rabinowitz travelled way further north than that, to areas that are probably still off limits to most foreigners. Going up to Hkakabo Razi took his expidition several weeks walking, with a team of scientists from Yangon, soldiers, and dozens of carriers. Rabinowitz's main mission is researching wildlife and preparing plans for its protection, but he is curious to learn about anything he sees along the way, especially people he meets in the villages. And in fact, the culture and way of life of these people is central to wildlife protection. One crucial thing he found out is that they hunt significantly more wildlife than they need for their own supply of meat, skins etc. Wildlife products sold to merchants from China has been the only way for them to get household supplies that they can't produce themselves and especially salt, which is central to their survival but not available in the mountains. Rabinowitz does not follow a romantic notion that all wildlife protection has to start with the development of local tribes (and thus put people first), but he involves them and respects their needs. Interestingly, he also tries to appeal to their faith by asking Christian pastors for alternative ideas on how to look at wildlife in relation to humans.
Another thing I appreciate is that the author does not present himself as hero. He shares his journey, his passion, his planning but also his weaknesses, his sorrows, his stubborn fast pace that was not good for his knee or other team members. It was also great to see how partnerships and friendships with villagers, scientists and officials, despite the occasional clash of cultural values.
The real journey in Myanmar began with establishing contacts with the government, getting permits to travel and do research, finding reasons to go further north, gather data to support plans for protected areas, training staff. I found the interaction with the different government actors very interesting.
Alan Rabinowitz travelled way further north than that, to areas that are probably still off limits to most foreigners. Going up to Hkakabo Razi took his expidition several weeks walking, with a team of scientists from Yangon, soldiers, and dozens of carriers. Rabinowitz's main mission is researching wildlife and preparing plans for its protection, but he is curious to learn about anything he sees along the way, especially people he meets in the villages. And in fact, the culture and way of life of these people is central to wildlife protection. One crucial thing he found out is that they hunt significantly more wildlife than they need for their own supply of meat, skins etc. Wildlife products sold to merchants from China has been the only way for them to get household supplies that they can't produce themselves and especially salt, which is central to their survival but not available in the mountains. Rabinowitz does not follow a romantic notion that all wildlife protection has to start with the development of local tribes (and thus put people first), but he involves them and respects their needs. Interestingly, he also tries to appeal to their faith by asking Christian pastors for alternative ideas on how to look at wildlife in relation to humans.
Another thing I appreciate is that the author does not present himself as hero. He shares his journey, his passion, his planning but also his weaknesses, his sorrows, his stubborn fast pace that was not good for his knee or other team members. It was also great to see how partnerships and friendships with villagers, scientists and officials, despite the occasional clash of cultural values.
The real journey in Myanmar began with establishing contacts with the government, getting permits to travel and do research, finding reasons to go further north, gather data to support plans for protected areas, training staff. I found the interaction with the different government actors very interesting.
April 3, 2023
Beyond the Last Village: A Journey of Discovery in Asia’s Forbidden Wilderness by Alan Rabinowitz (Island Press 2001) (333.954) (3752).
Biologist and prolific author Alan Rabinowitz writes movingly about his experiences as the first Western biologist to be allowed into Myanmar’s primitive northeastern territory in the later half of the twentieth century. Access to this lesser-developed Asian country has been tightly controlled by the military since World War II and has been closed to Western scientists since that time.
With the permission of the country's ruling military authorities, Rabinowitz led several expeditions to Myanmar’s northeast between 1990 and the 2001 publication date of this volume. His findings led directly resulted to the formation of Myanmar’s largest national parks.
The author never makes up his mind whether this book is intended to be a naturalist’s journal or an exploration of his own personal angst from a childhood speech impediment. He sprinkles highly personal confessional asides throughout this little volume. While these short passages might help inform readers as to the author’s own emotional development, these asides contribute little to the tale’s underlying narrative and simply detract from the arc promoted by the book’s title and premise.
I purchased a used HB copy in good condition for $3.00 from McKay’s on 6/1/22.
My rating: 7/10, finished 4/3/23 (3752).
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September 27, 2021
I enjoyed reading the book because it described life in places that are off-limits for foreigners in Myanmar. It's amazing to know the author managed to basically initiate work on conservation in many areas and along with local officials and his colleagues who were able to continue with these efforts increased the protected area of Myanmar's wilderness from 1% in 1996 to the current 8%! With the two parks he worked on being the largest protected areas to date. But this book also showed the 'white saviour' complex - foreigners coming to a developing country full of knowledge and ideas to teach the local people what should be done and how, while taking the credit for achieving (and bragging about) the positive results without acknowledging the hard work of the local colleagues in the background through the bureaucracy. He managed to keep the sober view of the military government, although clearly enjoying his privilege of being on good terms with them (only until his last trip). I also enjoyed that he mixed his personal story into it as it was clear that those trips to Myanmar had indeed changed/influenced his life.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 9, 2019
အရင္ကၾကားဖူးတဲ့ 'အထက္မွာတရံု ေအာက္မွာဆလံု' ဆိုတဲ့အတိုင္း ဒီစာအုပ္ထဲမွာ တရုံ(Taron)နဲ႔ ဆလံု(Saron) လူမ်ိဳးအေၾကာင္းေတြပါပါတယ္။
စာေရးဆရာကေတာ့ ၁၉၉၃ခုႏွစ္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ ေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၧန္ထိန္းသိမ္းေစာင့္ေရွာက္မႈ
လုပ္ငန္းေတြကို အစပ်ိဳးေပးခဲ့တဲ့ အဲ့တုန္းကေတာ့
Wildlife Conservation Society(WCS)ရဲ႕ အာရွပရုိဂရမ္ဒါရုိက္တာလည္းျဖစ္ ေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၦန္ဆိုင္ရာ ဇီဝသိပၸံပညာရွင္ အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံသား Dr.Alan Rabinowitz ပဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
၁၉၉၃ခုႏွစ္မွာ WCS ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ စတင္ ေျခကုတ္ရယူတဲ့အခ်ိန္ေပါ့။ WCS အဖြဲ႕အစည္းဟာ အစိုးရနဲ႔ မသက္ဆိုင္တဲ့ႏိုင္ငံတကာအဖြဲ႕အစည္းႀကီးတစ္ခု
ျဖစ္ၿပီး ၁၈၉၅ခုႏွစ္ကတည္းကနယူးေယာက္ၿမိဳ႕
အေျခစိုက္ တိရစာၦန္ဥယ်ာဥ္ကအစျပဳၿပီး
ကမာၻတစ္ဝန္းေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၧန္ ထိန္းသိမ္းေစာင့္ေရွာက္မႈလုပ္ငန္းေတြကို စတင္ေဆာင္ရြက္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ဒီစာအုပ္ထဲမွာဆိုရင္ စာေရးသူဟာ ဟိုးျမန္မာျပည္ေတာင္ဘက္ဆံုးက Lampi Island ကို Marine Nationl Park ျဖစ္ေအာင္ သြားေရာက္ေလ့လာၿပီး အဆိုျပဳခဲ့တယ္။ အဲ့မွာ ဆလံုေတြနဲ႔ေတြ႕ခဲ့တယ္။
ၾကားထဲမွာ စစ္ကိုင္းတိုင္းေဒသႀကီး ထမံသီ-ဟုမၼလင္းဘက္မွာ သြားေရာက့္ေလ့လာတယ္။ သူ႔ရဲ႕ပန္းတိုင္ကေတာ့ ဟိုးျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေျမာက္ဘက္ဆံုး ဟိမဝႏၵာေတာင္တန္းႀကီးရဲ႕ အဖ်ား ခါကာဘိုရာဇီေတာင္ေျခရင္းနားမွာ
ရွိတဲ့'the last village' Tahudanလို႔ေခၚတဲ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ေျမာက္ဘက္က်ဆံုးရြာေလးထိ ေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၦန္ေတြကို သြားေရာက္ စူးစမ္းေလ့လာဖို႔ပါပဲ။
ပူတာအိုကေနအစ ေျခလ်င္နဲ႔ ရြာအဆင့္ဆင့္ ေတာင္အထပ္ထပ္ ျမစ္ေခ်ာင္းအလီလီကို ေက်ာ္ျဖတ္ၿပီး လမ္းခရီးတစ္ေလၽွာက္မွာေတြြရတဲ့ ေရေျမ ေတာေတာင္သဘာဝရႈခင္းေတြ၊သဘာဝေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၦန္ေတြ၊ေဒသခံတိုင္းရင္းသားေတြရဲ႕ရုိုးရာဓေလ့ယဥ္ေက်းမႈေတြ၊ဘာသာေရး၊ႏိုင္ငံေရး
အေျခအေန၊ ခရီးစဥ္အတြင္းၾကံဳေတြ႕ရတဲ့ အခက္အခဲေတြကို အရွိကိုအရွိတိုင္း အကြန္႔အညြန႔္ေတြမပါဘဲ ေရးသားေဖာ္ျပထားတယ္။
စာေရးသူ ေရာက္ခဲ့တဲ့အခ်ိန္က ၁၉၉၇ ခုႏွစ္တုန္းကျဖစ္တယ္။ ပူတာအိုကေန ေနာက္ဆံုးရြာထိ ေျခလ်င္နဲ႔ အသြားအျပန္ ၂၈ရက္ၾကာျမင့္ပါတယ္။ ကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္ေျမာက္ပိုင္းဟာ အိႏၵိယ၊ တိဘတ္၊တရုတ္တို႔နဲ႔ နယ္နမိတ္ထိစပ္ေနတာေၾကာင့္ ႏွင္းေတြမပိတ္တဲ့အခ်ိန္ဆို တရုတ္ကုန္သည္ေတြလာၿပီး ေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၦန္ေရာင္းဝယ္ေဖာက္ကားမႈကေတာ့ လုပ္ပါတယ္။ အဲ့တာေၾကာင့္ စာေရးသူဟာ ေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၦန္ေတြမ်ိဳးသုဥ္းေပ်ာက္ကြယ္မသြားေအာင္ Hkakabo Razi National Park ျဖစ္လာေအာင္ သစ္ေတာေရးရာဝန္ႀကီးဌာနနဲ႔ ပူးေပါင္းၿပီး စတင္အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ခဲ့တာ ၁၉၉၈ ႏိုဝင္ဘာလ ၁၂ရက္မွာ ခါကာဘိုရာဇီအမ်ိဳးသားဥယ်ာဥ္ႀကီး ျဖစ္လာတယ္။ ဒါဟာ စာေရးသူရဲ႕ ဘဝမွာႀကီးမားတဲ့ ေအာင္ျမင္မႈျဖစ္သလို ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ WCS ရဲ႕ ေအာင္ျမင္မႈအစလည္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ခုဆိုရင္ Hkakabo Razi National Park ကိုု UNESCO World Heritage Site ရဲ႕အေမြအႏွစ္အေနနဲ႔ထည့္သြင္းဖို႔ႀကိဳးစားေနေပမယ့္ မၾကာေသးခင္ ၂၀၁၇ ႏွစ္ကုန္ခါနီးက ေဒသခံေတြရဲ႕ ကန္႔ကြက္မႈေတြရွိခဲ့တယ္။
ဒီခရီးစဥ္သြားတာ သူတစ္ေယာက္တည္း မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ ပူတာအိုကေန ဟိုးေျမာက္ဘက္ဆံုး Tahudan ရြာကိုျပန္မယ့္ ဗုဒၶဘာသာ ဆရာေတာ္တစ္ပါး၊ WCS ဝန္ထမ္းေတြ၊ သစ္ေတာဌာနကဝန္ထမ္းေတြ၊ရန္ကုန္တကၠသိုလ္က သတၱ/ရုကၡ ပညာရွင္ေတြ၊သစ္ခြပညာရွင္၊ငွက္ဆရာ ၊ပထဝီပညာရွင္ အစရွိတဲ့ ပညာရွင္ေတြအျပင္ စစ္တပ္ဘက္ကလည္းလိုက္ပါသြားပါတယ္။
ငယ္ငယ္ကၾကည့္ဖူးတဲ့ travel documentaryနဲ႔ ဇာတ္လမ္းေတြေၾကာင့္ ကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္ရဲ႕ ရႈခင္းကို မ်က္စိထဲမွာ ကြင္းကြင္းကြက္ကြက္ ျမင္လာတယ္။ စာဖတ္ရင္းခရီးစဥ္မွာကိုယ္တိုင္လိုက္ပါသြားရသလို ခံစားရတယ္။
အဲ့ဒီမွာေနာက္ဆံုးရြာကိုမေရာက္ခင္ Karaung ဆိုတဲ့ရြာမွာ pygmy လူပုမ်ိဳးေတြျဖစ္တဲ့ Taron တရုံလူမ်ိဳးေတြကို စာေရးသူေတြ႕ခဲ့ရတယ္။ သူတို႔ဟာHtalu ဆိုတဲ့ လူမ်ိဳးစုနဲ႔ တစ္ရြာထဲအတူေနၿပီး အဲ့အခ်ိန္တုန္းက ၁၂ေယာက္ပဲက်န္ေတာ့တယ္။တကယ့္ pure Taron ကေတာ့ ၃ေယာက္ပဲက်န္ပါတယ္။
စာေရးသူသြားခဲ့တဲ့ ၁၉၉၇ ခုႏွစ္တုန္းက အသက္အငယ္ဆံုး Taron အမ်ိဳးသားေတာင္ ၃၉ႏွစ္ရွိေနပါၿပီ။ အဲ့ဒီမွာ ဘာလို႔ တရံုလူမ်ိဳးေတြမ်ိဳးဆက္ပ်က္သြားရတယ္ဆိုတာကို ဝမ္းနည္းစရာဖတ္လိုက္ရပါတယ္။
စာေရးသူရဲ႕ပထမဆံုးျမန္မာျပည္ေျမာက္ပိုင္းခရီးစဥ္ကေတာ့ရွားပါးေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၦန္မ်ိဳးစိတ္သစ္ရွာေဖြေတြ႕ရွိမႈနဲ႔ အျခားေသာ ဇီဝမ်ိဳးကြဲေတြကိုလည္း မွတ္တမ္းတင္ႏိုင္ခဲ့တယ္။ စာေရးသူဟာ သူ႔ရဲ႕ကိုယ္ေရးကိုယ္တာ ကိစၥေတြထက္ ေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၦန္ထိန္းသိမ္းဖို႔က ပိုအေရးႀကီးေနခဲ့တယ္။ သူဟာ သူ႔လုပ္ငန္းကိုဘယ္ေလာက္ေတာင္ passionate ျဖစ္ၿပီးခ်စ္ခင္တယ္ဆိုတာအခက္အခဲေတြအမ်ားႀကီးထဲကေန ေအာင္ျမင္မႈကိုရေအာင္ယူျပခဲ့တယ္။ ဘယ္အရာမဆိုႀကိဳးစားရင္ေအာင္ျမင္မယ္ဆိုတဲ့ စိတ္ဓာတ္ခြန္အားေတြကိုရရွိေစတယ္။
ဒီစာအုပ္ကေတာ့ ေဒသႏၲရ ဗဟုသုတမ်ားစြာနဲ႔ ခရီးစဥ္အတြင္းျဖစ္ရပ္မွန္ေတြကိုေရးသားထားတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ သဘာဝေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၦန္ေတြအေၾကာင္း သမိုင္းျဖစ္ရပ္မွန္ကို ေရးသားထားတာေၾကာင့္ ဖတ္ကိုဖတ္သင့္တဲ့ စာအုပ္လို႔အၾကံဳျပဳလိုပါတယ္။ တစ္ေန႔က်ရင္ ေရခဲေတာင္ေတြဆီ တစ္ေခါက္ေလာက္ေရာက္ခ်င္မိတယ္။
* * * * * * *
Have been wandering alone along the train of thoughts and imaginations after reading this well written journey of discovery and learnt better about myself for my love of nature and wilderness. Now it is my semester break and literally doing nothing specail but this book caught my attention after my sister said that here's a rare and priceless book, the cover itself tells the story.
The name of the book is 'Beyond the Last Village:A Journey of Discovery in Asia's Forbidden Wilderness'. The settings itself were already familar with my eyes, reminising the travel documentary that I had ever watched in my childhood. It was in the farthest northern of Myanmar, Hkakabo Razi, recorded to be the highest mountain at an elevation of 19,295 ft, also marked to be the highest of Southeast Asian Mountain.
The author is a wildlife biological scientist.The journey of the author was to the farthest northern of Kachin villages in explore of wildelife for the first time in 1997.There he met Taron ethnic, a pygmy tribe living togther with Burmese-Tibetan in the northern icy mountain. The only recorded Pygmy in Southeast Asia at that time. Taron story was really touching that they were going to diminish in the near future. At that time pure Taron was only 3 among the twelve members of Taron tribe.
The success of the journey was that the finding of new species of wildlife which were new to science and many other biodiversity including herbs, orchids and birds. Being the Asia Program Director of Wildlife Conservation Society(WCS), the author could help initiate WSC work in Myanmar since 1993 and in 1998 his journey to Northern Myanmar was a great success with the establishment of Hkakabo Razi National Park which was the largest wildlife sanctuary not only in Myanmar but also in Southeast Asia.
စာေရးဆရာကေတာ့ ၁၉၉၃ခုႏွစ္ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ ေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၧန္ထိန္းသိမ္းေစာင့္ေရွာက္မႈ
လုပ္ငန္းေတြကို အစပ်ိဳးေပးခဲ့တဲ့ အဲ့တုန္းကေတာ့
Wildlife Conservation Society(WCS)ရဲ႕ အာရွပရုိဂရမ္ဒါရုိက္တာလည္းျဖစ္ ေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၦန္ဆိုင္ရာ ဇီဝသိပၸံပညာရွင္ အေမရိကန္ႏိုင္ငံသား Dr.Alan Rabinowitz ပဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
၁၉၉၃ခုႏွစ္မွာ WCS ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ စတင္ ေျခကုတ္ရယူတဲ့အခ်ိန္ေပါ့။ WCS အဖြဲ႕အစည္းဟာ အစိုးရနဲ႔ မသက္ဆိုင္တဲ့ႏိုင္ငံတကာအဖြဲ႕အစည္းႀကီးတစ္ခု
ျဖစ္ၿပီး ၁၈၉၅ခုႏွစ္ကတည္းကနယူးေယာက္ၿမိဳ႕
အေျခစိုက္ တိရစာၦန္ဥယ်ာဥ္ကအစျပဳၿပီး
ကမာၻတစ္ဝန္းေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၧန္ ထိန္းသိမ္းေစာင့္ေရွာက္မႈလုပ္ငန္းေတြကို စတင္ေဆာင္ရြက္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ဒီစာအုပ္ထဲမွာဆိုရင္ စာေရးသူဟာ ဟိုးျမန္မာျပည္ေတာင္ဘက္ဆံုးက Lampi Island ကို Marine Nationl Park ျဖစ္ေအာင္ သြားေရာက္ေလ့လာၿပီး အဆိုျပဳခဲ့တယ္။ အဲ့မွာ ဆလံုေတြနဲ႔ေတြ႕ခဲ့တယ္။
ၾကားထဲမွာ စစ္ကိုင္းတိုင္းေဒသႀကီး ထမံသီ-ဟုမၼလင္းဘက္မွာ သြားေရာက့္ေလ့လာတယ္။ သူ႔ရဲ႕ပန္းတိုင္ကေတာ့ ဟိုးျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံေျမာက္ဘက္ဆံုး ဟိမဝႏၵာေတာင္တန္းႀကီးရဲ႕ အဖ်ား ခါကာဘိုရာဇီေတာင္ေျခရင္းနားမွာ
ရွိတဲ့'the last village' Tahudanလို႔ေခၚတဲ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ေျမာက္ဘက္က်ဆံုးရြာေလးထိ ေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၦန္ေတြကို သြားေရာက္ စူးစမ္းေလ့လာဖို႔ပါပဲ။
ပူတာအိုကေနအစ ေျခလ်င္နဲ႔ ရြာအဆင့္ဆင့္ ေတာင္အထပ္ထပ္ ျမစ္ေခ်ာင္းအလီလီကို ေက်ာ္ျဖတ္ၿပီး လမ္းခရီးတစ္ေလၽွာက္မွာေတြြရတဲ့ ေရေျမ ေတာေတာင္သဘာဝရႈခင္းေတြ၊သဘာဝေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၦန္ေတြ၊ေဒသခံတိုင္းရင္းသားေတြရဲ႕ရုိုးရာဓေလ့ယဥ္ေက်းမႈေတြ၊ဘာသာေရး၊ႏိုင္ငံေရး
အေျခအေန၊ ခရီးစဥ္အတြင္းၾကံဳေတြ႕ရတဲ့ အခက္အခဲေတြကို အရွိကိုအရွိတိုင္း အကြန္႔အညြန႔္ေတြမပါဘဲ ေရးသားေဖာ္ျပထားတယ္။
စာေရးသူ ေရာက္ခဲ့တဲ့အခ်ိန္က ၁၉၉၇ ခုႏွစ္တုန္းကျဖစ္တယ္။ ပူတာအိုကေန ေနာက္ဆံုးရြာထိ ေျခလ်င္နဲ႔ အသြားအျပန္ ၂၈ရက္ၾကာျမင့္ပါတယ္။ ကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္ေျမာက္ပိုင္းဟာ အိႏၵိယ၊ တိဘတ္၊တရုတ္တို႔နဲ႔ နယ္နမိတ္ထိစပ္ေနတာေၾကာင့္ ႏွင္းေတြမပိတ္တဲ့အခ်ိန္ဆို တရုတ္ကုန္သည္ေတြလာၿပီး ေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၦန္ေရာင္းဝယ္ေဖာက္ကားမႈကေတာ့ လုပ္ပါတယ္။ အဲ့တာေၾကာင့္ စာေရးသူဟာ ေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၦန္ေတြမ်ိဳးသုဥ္းေပ်ာက္ကြယ္မသြားေအာင္ Hkakabo Razi National Park ျဖစ္လာေအာင္ သစ္ေတာေရးရာဝန္ႀကီးဌာနနဲ႔ ပူးေပါင္းၿပီး စတင္အေကာင္အထည္ေဖာ္ခဲ့တာ ၁၉၉၈ ႏိုဝင္ဘာလ ၁၂ရက္မွာ ခါကာဘိုရာဇီအမ်ိဳးသားဥယ်ာဥ္ႀကီး ျဖစ္လာတယ္။ ဒါဟာ စာေရးသူရဲ႕ ဘဝမွာႀကီးမားတဲ့ ေအာင္ျမင္မႈျဖစ္သလို ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ WCS ရဲ႕ ေအာင္ျမင္မႈအစလည္းျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ခုဆိုရင္ Hkakabo Razi National Park ကိုု UNESCO World Heritage Site ရဲ႕အေမြအႏွစ္အေနနဲ႔ထည့္သြင္းဖို႔ႀကိဳးစားေနေပမယ့္ မၾကာေသးခင္ ၂၀၁၇ ႏွစ္ကုန္ခါနီးက ေဒသခံေတြရဲ႕ ကန္႔ကြက္မႈေတြရွိခဲ့တယ္။
ဒီခရီးစဥ္သြားတာ သူတစ္ေယာက္တည္း မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ ပူတာအိုကေန ဟိုးေျမာက္ဘက္ဆံုး Tahudan ရြာကိုျပန္မယ့္ ဗုဒၶဘာသာ ဆရာေတာ္တစ္ပါး၊ WCS ဝန္ထမ္းေတြ၊ သစ္ေတာဌာနကဝန္ထမ္းေတြ၊ရန္ကုန္တကၠသိုလ္က သတၱ/ရုကၡ ပညာရွင္ေတြ၊သစ္ခြပညာရွင္၊ငွက္ဆရာ ၊ပထဝီပညာရွင္ အစရွိတဲ့ ပညာရွင္ေတြအျပင္ စစ္တပ္ဘက္ကလည္းလိုက္ပါသြားပါတယ္။
ငယ္ငယ္ကၾကည့္ဖူးတဲ့ travel documentaryနဲ႔ ဇာတ္လမ္းေတြေၾကာင့္ ကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္ရဲ႕ ရႈခင္းကို မ်က္စိထဲမွာ ကြင္းကြင္းကြက္ကြက္ ျမင္လာတယ္။ စာဖတ္ရင္းခရီးစဥ္မွာကိုယ္တိုင္လိုက္ပါသြားရသလို ခံစားရတယ္။
အဲ့ဒီမွာေနာက္ဆံုးရြာကိုမေရာက္ခင္ Karaung ဆိုတဲ့ရြာမွာ pygmy လူပုမ်ိဳးေတြျဖစ္တဲ့ Taron တရုံလူမ်ိဳးေတြကို စာေရးသူေတြ႕ခဲ့ရတယ္။ သူတို႔ဟာHtalu ဆိုတဲ့ လူမ်ိဳးစုနဲ႔ တစ္ရြာထဲအတူေနၿပီး အဲ့အခ်ိန္တုန္းက ၁၂ေယာက္ပဲက်န္ေတာ့တယ္။တကယ့္ pure Taron ကေတာ့ ၃ေယာက္ပဲက်န္ပါတယ္။
စာေရးသူသြားခဲ့တဲ့ ၁၉၉၇ ခုႏွစ္တုန္းက အသက္အငယ္ဆံုး Taron အမ်ိဳးသားေတာင္ ၃၉ႏွစ္ရွိေနပါၿပီ။ အဲ့ဒီမွာ ဘာလို႔ တရံုလူမ်ိဳးေတြမ်ိဳးဆက္ပ်က္သြားရတယ္ဆိုတာကို ဝမ္းနည္းစရာဖတ္လိုက္ရပါတယ္။
စာေရးသူရဲ႕ပထမဆံုးျမန္မာျပည္ေျမာက္ပိုင္းခရီးစဥ္ကေတာ့ရွားပါးေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၦန္မ်ိဳးစိတ္သစ္ရွာေဖြေတြ႕ရွိမႈနဲ႔ အျခားေသာ ဇီဝမ်ိဳးကြဲေတြကိုလည္း မွတ္တမ္းတင္ႏိုင္ခဲ့တယ္။ စာေရးသူဟာ သူ႔ရဲ႕ကိုယ္ေရးကိုယ္တာ ကိစၥေတြထက္ ေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၦန္ထိန္းသိမ္းဖို႔က ပိုအေရးႀကီးေနခဲ့တယ္။ သူဟာ သူ႔လုပ္ငန္းကိုဘယ္ေလာက္ေတာင္ passionate ျဖစ္ၿပီးခ်စ္ခင္တယ္ဆိုတာအခက္အခဲေတြအမ်ားႀကီးထဲကေန ေအာင္ျမင္မႈကိုရေအာင္ယူျပခဲ့တယ္။ ဘယ္အရာမဆိုႀကိဳးစားရင္ေအာင္ျမင္မယ္ဆိုတဲ့ စိတ္ဓာတ္ခြန္အားေတြကိုရရွိေစတယ္။
ဒီစာအုပ္ကေတာ့ ေဒသႏၲရ ဗဟုသုတမ်ားစြာနဲ႔ ခရီးစဥ္အတြင္းျဖစ္ရပ္မွန္ေတြကိုေရးသားထားတယ္။ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ သဘာဝေတာရုိင္းတိရစာၦန္ေတြအေၾကာင္း သမိုင္းျဖစ္ရပ္မွန္ကို ေရးသားထားတာေၾကာင့္ ဖတ္ကိုဖတ္သင့္တဲ့ စာအုပ္လို႔အၾကံဳျပဳလိုပါတယ္။ တစ္ေန႔က်ရင္ ေရခဲေတာင္ေတြဆီ တစ္ေခါက္ေလာက္ေရာက္ခ်င္မိတယ္။
* * * * * * *
Have been wandering alone along the train of thoughts and imaginations after reading this well written journey of discovery and learnt better about myself for my love of nature and wilderness. Now it is my semester break and literally doing nothing specail but this book caught my attention after my sister said that here's a rare and priceless book, the cover itself tells the story.
The name of the book is 'Beyond the Last Village:A Journey of Discovery in Asia's Forbidden Wilderness'. The settings itself were already familar with my eyes, reminising the travel documentary that I had ever watched in my childhood. It was in the farthest northern of Myanmar, Hkakabo Razi, recorded to be the highest mountain at an elevation of 19,295 ft, also marked to be the highest of Southeast Asian Mountain.
The author is a wildlife biological scientist.The journey of the author was to the farthest northern of Kachin villages in explore of wildelife for the first time in 1997.There he met Taron ethnic, a pygmy tribe living togther with Burmese-Tibetan in the northern icy mountain. The only recorded Pygmy in Southeast Asia at that time. Taron story was really touching that they were going to diminish in the near future. At that time pure Taron was only 3 among the twelve members of Taron tribe.
The success of the journey was that the finding of new species of wildlife which were new to science and many other biodiversity including herbs, orchids and birds. Being the Asia Program Director of Wildlife Conservation Society(WCS), the author could help initiate WSC work in Myanmar since 1993 and in 1998 his journey to Northern Myanmar was a great success with the establishment of Hkakabo Razi National Park which was the largest wildlife sanctuary not only in Myanmar but also in Southeast Asia.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 18, 2023
Alan Rabinowitz has written a very interesting look at villages in remote Northern Burma on the Chinese border in the area of Myanmar known as the Kachin state. The various peoples he describes in this book are distinct from the Burmans of the plains.
Rabinowitz is a zoologist and searching for new fauna and in the remote mountains and forests of Kachin state he has found some, starting with purchasing animal parts from native hunters.
The setting of the book is the 1990s, when Myanmar was still under a military government.
The books a great read and a deep dive into Myanmar.
Rabinowitz is a zoologist and searching for new fauna and in the remote mountains and forests of Kachin state he has found some, starting with purchasing animal parts from native hunters.
The setting of the book is the 1990s, when Myanmar was still under a military government.
The books a great read and a deep dive into Myanmar.
September 9, 2018
Having read Alan's book, Jaguar: One Man’s Struggle to Establish the First Jaguar Preserve, which is one of my favorites, and hearing of his death I picked this one to read in is honor. Another amazing story. One person can make a difference; he created three national parks in Burma. I like the way he interweaves the inner journey with the outer one. A true hero that the world will miss!
July 8, 2022
Really solid mix of conservation nitty-gritty, adventure tale, and personal memoir. Reads quickly but the feelings are intense and the description is sometimes delightfully lush, other times startlingly clear and simple.
CN: ableism, bullying, childhood trauma; unexamined colonialist assumptions typical of the time (late 90s) and the author's background
CN: ableism, bullying, childhood trauma; unexamined colonialist assumptions typical of the time (late 90s) and the author's background
August 27, 2019
My first introduction to this author. A great read of personal adventure and wildlife conservation.
April 2, 2023
Highly recommend this and all of Alan's books.
September 7, 2010
While quite similar in many respects to "The Snow Leopard" by Peter Mathiessen, this book only touches on the religions of this region and focuses instead on wildlife policy, management and field work. Both use the physical journey as a metaphor and an avenue for examining internal and personal exploration. Alan Rabinowitz's personal story is quite amazing and while his childhood speech problems hang over the entire story, we only get one or two real insights into that part of his life. This book is a great adventure novel with plenty of the usual hardships. While his speech and his relationship to his wife add secondary story lines to the main plot of working to protect wildlife in Myanmar, these three tend to compete for the spotlight rather than complement each other. The sheer fact that more words are devoted to it tells us that the wildlife work is indeed the main story.
This is also a good motivational work that should inspire you to set and achieve even the loftiest of goals. The fact that he has been diagnosed with cancer since this publication adds to the reader's view of him as a fighter.
I probably would have given the book four stars if I had never read "The Snow Leopard". While very competent, Rabinowitz is a wildlife scientist first and a writer second. If you're interested in conservation and the process of proposing and developing wildlife management areas this book will certainly be of interest. It's a fairly quick and easy read.
This is also a good motivational work that should inspire you to set and achieve even the loftiest of goals. The fact that he has been diagnosed with cancer since this publication adds to the reader's view of him as a fighter.
I probably would have given the book four stars if I had never read "The Snow Leopard". While very competent, Rabinowitz is a wildlife scientist first and a writer second. If you're interested in conservation and the process of proposing and developing wildlife management areas this book will certainly be of interest. It's a fairly quick and easy read.
August 1, 2010
I appreciate Rabinowitz's connecting his outer journey, laying groundwork for a national park in Myanamar, to his inner journey of accepting and loving his stuttering youthful self. And, both are important. I admire how he worked with the government and local culture to meet the roadless mountains, valleys and river and then how the places spoke to him. "I realized now what the hunters meant when they talked of the 'love' they felt after having touched the trees and walked in the snows of the icy mountains. I knew why they tried to hold on to those feelings, and why they kept the smell in their clothes as long as they could. I did the same."
September 29, 2025
The narrative takes the reader through Hkakabo Razi National Park, located at the southeast edge of the Himalayas, now one of Southeast Asia's largest protected areas. Rabinowitz explores this 'lost world,' highlighting the Rawang, a former slave group, the Taron, the solitary enclave of Asia's only pygmies, and Myanmar Tibetans in remote mountain regions. He also discusses the habitats of rare and majestic animals, such as golden takin, red goral, blue sheep, and black barking deer, whose survival is threatened not by nature but by hunters using snares and crossbows, trading their body parts for basic necessities. Rabinowitz conveys a compelling message.
November 1, 2007
It was an interesting opinion of Burma and Burmese culture for a different perspective than the political. The author wrote well enough but gave way to much of his own opinions on things that had nothing to do with the topic that he is writing about and educated in. It was mostly about the authors trips to Burma in order to protect certain lands that have diverse plant and animal wildlife and the problems he encountered while doing so. It gave insight in to the Burmese land/landscape as well as the people there.
July 29, 2008
This book records the efforts to identify and save endangered animals in Myanmar. No westerners had been admitted for 30 years and he was able to get in, and eventually set up an animal preserve - it was so exciting to be there when then discovered animals that they thought were extinct and find animals where they weren't expected to be. Very eye opening without too heavy-handed on the conservation theme.
January 12, 2015
Absolutely cranked right through this book and wanted more. Rabinowitz's unfrilled writing style lets the events shine without the need for embellishment. This book had a more even split between descriptions of wildlife, indigenous people, and the author's personal life, but was all enjoyable. Highly recommended.
January 5, 2008
This is about a biological research expedition to remote Myanmar that culminated in the description of a new deer species. Also fascinating were descriptions of local villagers (including pygmy tribes). The author irritated me but his story is special.
March 11, 2011
neat book about the hillbilly country of golden triangle. you WOULD NOT believe what these folks do for little bags of salt. turns out author rabinowitz is quite a controversial character in the global (read western) animal/science/environmental game.
March 4, 2016
I wasn't all that interested in the wildlife aspect of this book but I really enjoyed reading about the trek and the people he met along the way. The stories of the villagers, and especially the pygmy family, were so heartbreaking. It's a good read.
October 17, 2007
If you like travel journey's, this book is for you! Explorer's venture into the wilds of Mayanmar (Burma)... awesome!
April 13, 2008
Indiana Jones ... without the fiction. Who would ever have thought that an adventure like this was still possible in this age?
August 5, 2011
one of my favorites
March 3, 2012
Not covering the bits of Burma I will be visiting but a very interesting read
April 7, 2014
Großartiges, spannendes Buch. sehr lesenswert.
January 25, 2009
Very interesting tale of trying to do conservation work in Burma.
February 17, 2009
This a very special book; Alan Rabinowitz is good company.
February 25, 2015
NF (Science)
281 pages
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