Nepal: On Assignment for National Geographic's The Last Honey Hunter story
In 2016 I traveled with photographer/filmmaker Renan Ozturk and Nat Geo grantee/expedition leader Ben Ayers to remote Nepal for The Last Honey Hunter story I was photo editing. The experience was a life highlight. I loved getting to know the incredibly warm, hospitable, hard-working Kulung villagers and stoic honey hunters. And it was fascinating and eye opening to join Renan and team as they put in long hours to capture video, stills, interviews, drone footage, and create instagram stories.
(I also highly recommend the poetic, haunting, award–winning film by teammate and talented director Ben Knight.)
The honey hunter team breaks after a 4 hour trek high into the mountains. We camped outside this school, and the next morning headed to the cliffs about an hour further to harvest the honey.
An assistant catches the homemade bamboo rope which is lowered down for Maule Dhan to harvest the honey hundreds of feet above.
Maule Dhan, the only one allowed by the forest spirits to harvest the honey, can be seen climbing high up the ladder while a team member stabilizes at the base.
The team has spent the morning offering blessings and smoking out bees. Despite uneven, wet terrain not to mention the leeches, most of the local team wore slides.
Asdhan (left) molds the wax into bricks by rapidly kneading and shaping while adding water. Jengi (right) will sell these in Kathmandu, Nepal.
Wax bricks and the 120-pound bamboo rope ladder lean against one of the homes in Sadhi.
Photographer/filmmakers Renan Oturk (blue) and Matt Irving (black) shoot drone footage above the village much to the kids’ delight.
