All language subtitles for The Himalayas BBC Natural World 2010 1080p HDTV x265 AAC EN Sub

The Himalayas appear
like a frozen fortress,

giving nothing,

not even enough air.

Yet there are animals here...

..miraculous and extraordinary,

nurtured by the mountains.

For people, too,
the mountains shape their world.

The animals of the Himalayas
teach us about the beauty
and fragility of life,

and the power of the most
inhospitable mountains on Earth.

The highest mountain range
in the world forms

a two thousand-mile scar across Asia,

separating India
from the Tibetan Plateau.

Our journey is from west to east,
through the seasons.

We start in Pakistan in winter.

The Karakoram Range, at the western
end of the Himalayas, is a world of

golden eagles, snow leopards,
markhors, bears, jackals, and wolves.

The snow leopard stalks markhors,
the wild mountain goats,
using the falling snow as cover.

At this altitude,
and in winter, nothing is easy.

Yet despite the cold
and the thin air, there is more life
within the Himalayas

than any other mountain range
on Earth.

The snow leopard
has a fully grown cub.

Families will stay together
longer than any other cat.

It's tough up here to make it alone.

The difficulties of mountain life
encourage companionship.

The wolves work together, searching
for frozen bodies under the snow.

Himalayan wolves
are from an old bloodline,
relics of an early ancestor.

Maybe this was the wolf's
first home.

The bonds within the pack, and the
mountain toughness, perhaps, helped
them to spread over half the world.

Domestic dogs came from Asian wolves,
so perhaps they, too,
are a gift from the Himalayas.

Is our companion on the hearthrug
with us a consequence of an ancient
lesson learnt in these mountains?

It's winter, and the higher villages
and farms are deserted.

Life follows the seasons
up and down the mountains.

Until recently, our presence hardly
registered at all on the biggest
scar on the planet's surface.

These mountains arose some
40 million years ago, when India,

pushing from the south,
hit the rest of Asia.

The land had nowhere to go but up,
and folds reached
over five miles high.

The Himalayas are a massive crumple
zone, reaching out of the air,
towards space.

In winter, most life retreats
to below the snowline.

They're relics
of an ancient ancestor.

A snow leopard's nearest relatives
could be lions, or even jaguars.

The family follow the antics
of the markhors.

The markhors breed in winter. Males
try to throw their rivals off cliffs.

As well as fighting, the dominant
buck follows the girls around,
with his tongue hanging out.

It's a distracting time
for the does.

Perfect for the snow leopard.

The markhor disappears
around the corner.

The snow leopard seems more puzzled
than anything else.

If there were one place on Earth
where we can see
the power of raw nature,

and the fragility of life,
it must be here.

Later, at night, the snow leopard
revisits the place where
the markhor leaped for freedom.

It's as if the mountains
have taken back her prize,

perhaps saved the markhor's life,

and she needs to understand
what happened.

In the bleak landscape
we find curiosity, caring families,
companionship, and hope.

The snow leopards and markhors will
disappear higher into the mountains.

We, too, must look beyond the valleys
to understand the extraordinary
forces that rule the Himalayas.

This is the largest deposit of
accumulated ice and compacted snow
outside the poles.

Thousands of cubic miles of ice
slide very slowly
down the mountains, as glaciers.

The glaciers feed many of
the greatest rivers in Asia.

Tiny changes up here
can affect parts of India and China,
thousands of miles away.

We are moving east, along
Karakoram Range, over the border
between Pakistan and India.

These peaks were carved
during ice ages.

It's about time for
another ice age, but instead,

the Himalayas are melting faster
than seems possible naturally.

Nature appears disturbed,
shifting angrily,

as though a delicate balance
was being lost.

As the glaciers descend and melt,
water pours into crevasses,
and carves tunnels inside the ice.

We are now in India, at Gaumukh,

"the cow's mouth",

one of the several holy sources
of the Ganges.

Pilgrims take a ritual bath
in its freezing milky waters.

The river, "Mother Ganges",
is revered as a goddess,
influencing millions of lives.

During March and April,
temples shed their winter isolation,
and villagers and farmers return.

Images of animals are everywhere,
emerging from an isolated
frozen winter, into spring.

The mountains themselves are sacred.

There's a legend of a holy peak,
a perfect four-sided pyramid.

From each face, according to
the stories, a great river flows.

Each river carries life
to the four corners of the Earth.

The mythical mountain is the
axis mundi, the centre of the world.

As we journey east
along the Himalayas, we find
a mountain to match the myth.

Its meltwater flows to the Indus in
Pakistan, and south into the Ganges.

Streams form the Yarlung
and head to Bangladesh.

Three of Asia's greatest rivers
can trace their source
to this one mountain.

It's Mount Kailash,
which means "crystal mountain".

Buddhists, Hindus and Jains
make pilgrimages here.

Priests, monks, musicians and
holy men all compete in a riot of
religious cultures.

HORNS BLARE

Giant prayer poles are raised,
also reaching up to heaven.

Paper prayers called wind horses
flutter up towards the peak,

where the gods of different faiths
are believed to reside.

The summit is so sacred,
it has never been climbed.

Our path continues east,
from the Karakorams in Pakistan,
into India and towards Nepal.

Spring is climbing the mountain, and
upland forests are returning to life.

It's a surprise to find
monkey mountaineers,
but the Himalayas have many.

In April, flowers and buds
feed langur monkeys.

They winter in the valleys,
and follow the snowline
up the mountains in spring.

There is something about
mountain life,

the hardship, perhaps, the fragility,
that actually changes the character
of the animals that live here.

Himalayan langurs are distinct
from their lowland cousins.

Up here is a more friendly society.

Further down the mountain, the males
fight for the control of a harem.

But here,
they all live together in one group.

Warm clouds
work their way up alpine valleys.

The snow leopards go deeper into
the mountains, impossible to follow.

The Himalayas are still largely
inaccessible and unexplored.

By May, bees have come out of
hibernation, or joined others
coming up from the valleys below.

Giant cliff bees build
three-foot combs
that are a rippling wall of bodies.

Waving their abdomens in unison
is a defensive warning to keep clear.

The bees' efforts are in vain.

Human honey-hunters
scale the cliffs.

The bees are the biggest in the world
and amongst the most dangerous.

They cut out the honey storage cells
with 15-foot poles,
into a relay of baskets.

Even the best protective clothes,
and a screen of smoke, is not enough,

and the honey-hunter retreats
to savour perhaps the most delicious
and dangerous honey in the world.

People have searched for magical
ingredients here for thousands
of years, and discovered

a powerful human aphrodisiac.

A little solitary deer
produces a musky resin
from a small gland on its stomach.

The musk deer has influenced love
and fashion across the world.

The most famous perfumes
are based on his scent.

From Cleopatra onwards,
kings and queens wooed with musk.

Muslims maintain it is the smell
of heaven, and they added it
to the mortar of the mosques,

so that the temples
smelt of paradise.

Affecting religion and history,

or giving us Chanel and Dior,
is not the musk deer's intention.

All he wants is to be noticed
by a female musk deer.

While we may want to smell
like Himalayan animals,

wanting to look like them is rarer,
but it does happen.

The monal pheasant, high above India
and Pakistan, is all flash, all show.

Males compete in a dance
of crests and colours.

Curiously, in the shadow of
the mountains, the guards
on the India and Pakistan border

do an irresistibly similar dance.

The crest, even the posturing walk,
perhaps, echo the bird display,

but the contest of thumbs
seems more like the markhor stag,
all horns and tongues.

India and Pakistan
are feuding neighbours.

How much better if all conflicts
could be fought out in this way?

Below mountain borders,
following glacial meltwater
in streams and rivers,

is a watery plain, the Ganges basin.

Here, cranes have their own dances.

This is the lowest we go. From here,
we will return to the highest peaks.

Many birds are hemmed in by the
Himalayas, like these sarus cranes.

But to bar-headed geese,
the mountains are no obstacle.

From the base of the Himalayas in
India, we head to Nepal and Bhutan,

mountain kingdoms
on the top of the world.

The Himalayas are made of range upon
range of mountains, building height.

The air becomes dangerously thin.

Bar-headed geese are the highest
flying birds in the world.

The higher they go,
the faster the jet-stream.

A 100 mile-an-hour tailwind
catapults them over the Himalayas.

Bar-headed geese
fly higher than Everest.

Their blood is different,
with special haemoglobin,

and they can breathe
faster and deeper,
many gulps for each wing beat.

They suffer severe hypoxia,
way beyond any human athlete,
pushing the boundaries of pain.

Bar-headed geese are not alone.

Some cranes, less well adapted,
gawky compared to the geese,
attempt the journey.

Demoiselle cranes find ways
through high mountain passes,
mothers leading their young.

The cranes use rising currents
of air to gain height,
to battle over ridges,

then descend into valleys
to recover.

There, waiting for them,
are golden eagles.

The eagles try to separate
young cranes from the flock.

The predators hunt cooperatively,
like so many others here.

The young crane escapes one,
and is caught by another.

There is nothing
the rest of the flock can do.

The demoiselle cranes battle on,
but ahead are the largest obstacles
in the world.

And the biggest of all, Everest.

One animal has learnt to survive,
briefly, at the top.

We don't need
to conquer these mountains,

there's no breeding site to get to,
and no adaptation to help us.

Yet every year, hundreds of people
push their physiology

for medical research, or more often,
for themselves.

The top is called the "death zone",

a combination
of the best view in the world

and being in no state to enjoy it.

Winds average hurricane force,
temperatures 50 below zero,

and a calm day can quickly change.

Over 200 people have died here,
many abandoned on the mountain.

About 10% of climbers attempting
the summit lose their lives,
and many more are injured.

In this harsh world of rock, ice
and courage, lives a little spider.

Its Latin name means
"standing above everything",

and it's been found at 22,000 feet.

It's supposedly the highest
living animal in the world.

But it can't be
the only one up here,

since spiders need other insects
to feed on.

Sure enough,
tiny flies and springtails
also manage at amazing altitudes.

But it's got another trick.

It's a jumping spider.

Like all good mountaineers,
it will secure a line.

Springtails are primitive insects
that feed on anything

blown up from lower altitudes.

This community of plants and animals
depend on airborne sustenance.

Hence the name

an Aeolian Biome,

life brought on the wind.

Very occasionally, snow leopards
are seen at high altitudes,

following goats, or maybe
scavenging our rubbish ever higher.

Wolves, too, are being seen up here,

in this case filmed
close to Everest base camp.

It's not clear if climate change
is opening up new areas for them

or if there's some other reason.

Scientists say it's warming
and melting here

faster than anywhere else
outside the poles.

Beyond Nepal and Bhutan,
following the cranes and geese over
the Himalayas, instead of finding

lush plains at sea level, we discover
a high, cold, dry plateau,

hardly lower than
the peaks themselves.

It is Tibet.

Glacial rivers thread through
a desiccated landscape
the size of France,

but higher than anything
in the Alps or the Rockies.

The Himalayan peaks are just the
jagged edge, the ramparts of a wall

with the Tibetan Plateau
hidden behind.

The animals cope with extreme
altitude, thin air and a tough life.

The snow leopards look the same,
but there are also new characters.

This is a brown bear, a grizzly
in all but name and tufted ears.

He's rare, timid
and hardly ever filmed.

The Tibetan fox
hunts a rodent called a pika.

Pikas live in dens,
like ground squirrels or rabbits,
and eat the tough grass.

Pikas are the staple food
of any predator.

He's the most wonderful-looking fox.

Square-jawed, eyes of cunning,
and a twisted, knowing smile.

The fox and the bear
go around as a team.

More high altitude cooperation,
perhaps, or maybe the wily fox

just follows the bear around,
hoping to nab a pika
from under the bear's nose.

It's mid-summer now,
but the ground is usually frozen,

and only the bear has the strength
to dig out the pikas.

If the bear is digging up
one end of a burrow,

the fox is ready for the pikas to
emerge at the other end in a panic.

PIKAS CALL

The bear missed out. The fox
eats some and buries the rest.

The deep permafrost
will help keep it fresh.

The Tibetan Plateau is so high
that despite being the same latitude

as North Africa, even in late
spring, the temperature is icy.

At 15,000 feet live chiru,
Tibetan antelopes.

The chiru puff like steam engines
in the cold, thin air.

A male guards his harem, breathing
clouds of misty condensation.

There are other males
eyeing up his females.

A neighbour might come charging in
to kidnap one for his own.

In these arctic conditions
it's very surprising to find...

a small snake.

In places, hot springs are a sign
of volcanic activity below.

The snake survived
its home being pushed

almost three miles straight up,
by holding out in this natural sauna.

The hot spring snake
is a lost relic.

Their nearest cousins
are across the world in America.

The streams flow into lakes,

now home to the bar-headed geese
after their epic journey
over the Himalayas.

One of the prettiest birds
chooses the roof of the world
to have up to ten beautiful goslings.

The goslings have to feed themselves
right from the start.

Bar-headed geese
always nest by water, for food,

but also to escape
the hardy Tibetan wolf.

HORNS PLAYING

Novice monks are practising
their Tibetan horns.

Buddhism was born on the other side
of the Himalayas, overlooking India,

but its mountain philosophy
soon spread to Tibet.

A love of nature and animals
is one of its teachings.

Cranes are symbols of a long life
and a faithful partnership.

CRANES CALL

Buddhists believe in reincarnation

and that every animal has a spirit
that one day will become a person

and that every person
has lived as an animal.

So wildlife
is looked after carefully,

and, like this crane
with a wounded wing,

fed and nursed back to health.

It's another example
of how the Himalayas
affect people and animals alike

and increase sensitivity
and co-operation.

For those who live in the shadow
of the Himalayas,
a little can be given back

in the most extraordinary
and extreme way possible.

A sky burial is the ultimate homage
to the mountain.

After you die,
you are taken up a revered peak
and left to feed the vultures.

Buddhists believe that
all life is connected,

each animal depends on another,
even BECOMES another.

It's an idea born in these mountains

from an understanding of the power
of nature and the complexity of life.

The Buddhists look to the mountains
particularly for reliable water
in calm streams.

But flowing east are massive
and changeable rivers -

the lifeblood of a billion people.

The Yangtze, the Yellow River,

the Yarlung
and the Mekong are all are born here
on the Tibetan Plateau.

To the north runs the Yellow River,
so-called because of the huge amount

of glacial soil it brings to China.

They call the Yellow River
the mother of Chinese civilization.

It has another name too -
China's Sorrow.

The floods have killed millions
of people down the generations.

As the climate changes, the river
will change and China's Sorrow
may take on a new meaning.

Thousands of dams battle

to harness and control the gifts
of the Himalayas for ourselves.

Another of Tibet's massive rivers
continues our journey east.

Then it turns south and cuts
straight through the Himalayas.

The Yarlung Brahmaputra,
from Mount Kailash, and the Nujiang,

the Yangtze and the giant Mekong all
slice through the mountains, creating
the most extraordinary place yet.

Some of the gorges are double
the depth of the Grand Canyon -
the rivers, the wildest in the world.

It makes getting around difficult,
and tests the ingenuity
of the Yunnan people.

Cable crossings of rattan rope had
been in use for hundreds of years

before steel was introduced.

This is the main route to market.

Getting around may be harder,
but these deep fissures draw
warm wet air in from the tropics.

The valleys act like the pipes
of a central heating system
and create tropical paradises

high in the mountains,
like the mythical Shangri-La.

To the Chinese particularly, this
is heaven, hidden beyond the clouds.

Tropical monkeys like bear macaques
live on rainforest fruit
at 8,000 feet.

Each Garden of Eden
has unique animals and plants,

walled in by mountains,
pockets of exceptional biodiversity.

The mountain chains
running into China are a sanctuary
from the plains below.

Elephants and leopards are
fleeing from farmers and loggers.

These high tropical forests
are a miraculous paradise.

Sunbirds drink nectar
from epiphytes,

musk deer provide
the fragrance of heaven.

While in a private corner
is another love story.

A pheasant plays peek-a-boo
with a prospective mate.

The Temminck's tragopan
hopes his bright wattle

and dance will show
he'll be a worthwhile husband.

She seems less than convinced,
and moves away.

He follows, displaying
on the move, ever hopeful.

But by midsummer, it's too late,
and he tucks his wattle away
for another year.

Above the warmer valleys,
another world...

..steep woods filled with lichen.

The Yunnan snub-nosed monkeys
feed almost entirely on the lichen,

and so are trapped
at the high altitude that it grows.

At 14,000 feet, they are
the highest primates in the world,
except for a few of us.

Large troops are formed
of many families, each with
a Buddha-like male and several wives.

Last year's young
help with the babies.

They are curious looking,
some like little elves

and some like plastic surgery
gone too far.

At the height of summer, a strange
cooling brings snow to the mountains.

The snub-nosed monkeys
feel the change in the weather.

Each July, the snow comes in
and the monkeys shiver.

The monsoon has begun.

The cold mountains draw tropical air
from the Indian Ocean,
thousands of miles away.

Clouds pile up,
and from July to September deliver
most of the annual snow and rain.

Without the Himalayas driving
the monsoon, Southern Asia
would be a desert.

Soil and mud, ground up by glaciers,

pour off the mountains.

The monsoon can bring life

or destruction and sorrow.

Life depends on the mountains, the
character of which is unpredictable.

It's not just a religious belief,
but a scientific fact as well.

In places, we shape the mountain
to our will to provide more food.

Rice paddies are some of the oldest
human structures on Earth.

The cultures that
understand the Himalayas
say we must give something back.

They say all life is connected,

and each animal depends on another,

even BECOMES another.

It is as if the mountains are trying
to teach us something else, too,

a very old lesson
about the power of nature

and the fragility of our lives.

It's not just the animals that makes
the Himalayas so extraordinary.

It's also the plants.

In fact, the floral wealth of this
region has had an enormous impact
on the lives of all of us.

It all began
in the early 19th century,

when a new wave of adventurers
risked their lives to collect
exotic plants from across the world.

The Himalayas
was one of the most promising
and tempting regions of all.

This rugged land was still largely
unknown to the outside world.

Here, surely, there were new
plant species to be found.

That quest led to
a special connection with
the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.

Well, in the 19th century
in particular,

there was a lot of collecting
of plants throughout the world,

particularly well-to-do people
liked to build up
collections of specimens

just as they liked to collect
stuffed animals
and this type of thing.

Joseph Dalton Hooker
was one such well-to-do explorer

and lucky for him,
his father was Director of Kew.

As Western high society became
gripped by a gardening craze,

William Hooker sent his son
in search of new plants.

In 1847, Joseph set off
on a three-year expedition
into the Himalayas.

Single-minded and determined,
he endured great hardships.

He suffered with altitude sickness,

his journey was sabotaged
by local people,

he was even imprisoned.

Nevertheless,
he walked for eight hours a day,

collecting plants and documenting
every detail of his travels.

He was the first European
to collect in the region

and his discoveries made him one of
the greatest botanists of the 19th
century, a key scientist of his age.

He returned from the Himalayas
with a wealth of new flowers,

including 28 new species
of rhododendron.

We've got some examples here
of specimens that were collected
by Hooker.

One example here is Rhododendron
arborium, which in fact
is the national flower of Nepal.

But there are a large number of
these specimens collected by Hooker

of this species from Nepal, and
we do have specimens that have got

Hooker's name on them,
so here we've got a specimen
that was collected in 1848.

Simply by bringing these new species
back, it would have had a great
impact, because lots of these things

would never have been seen before,
so a lot of new things
introduced into cultivation.

So these plants would have had
the real sort of wow factor
for gardeners at the time.

Gardeners across the nation
competed for the boldest
and brightest specimens,

bringing a little bit of the
Himalayas into everyone's garden.

In fact, a quarter of the plants
in our gardens today came
originally from the Himalayas...

from azaleas to euphorbias,

gentians to irises...

and peonies to primulas.

But Joseph Hooker
also recognised the value of plants
to science and medicine.

Today, the Herbarium
makes Kew one of the most important
botanical institutions in the world.

It's a vast database
housing over seven million specimens

and representing 98%
of the world's plant species.

Succeeding his father as Director,
Joseph also opened
the Jodrell Laboratory

and firmly established Kew
as a scientific institution.

This laboratory does a lot of work

on the biological activity
of plants.

We have an emphasis on looking for
medicinal uses of plants,

and that could be what we term

over-the-counter medicines -
things like coughs and colds -
but also looking for drugs

that could be used to treat things
like Alzheimer's, TB and cancer.

The Himalayan region
is estimated to have about

between 18,000 and maybe 20,000,
21,000 different species of plants,

and of those,
there's documentary evidence

on uses of about 2,000 of those
for medicinal uses.

So one of the things that we are
doing at Kew is partly capturing
the traditional uses,

but also looking at the traits
that plants have in different areas
that they have evolved

to protect themselves, that can help
us design drugs for the future.

People living in the remote valleys
of the Himalayas

have always relied on plants
for their medical remedies,
but so do we.

Around a quarter
of all our pharmaceuticals contain
substances derived from plants.

Plants that we may take
for granted in our gardens
could be miniature medicine chests.

Some of the plants that we've been
working on, some of them are
quite famous to the areas,

because they're not only
medicinal plants, but they're in
the culture of the people,

and that would be rhododendrons.

Every bit of the rhododendron plant
has a traditional use,

from the flowers to the leaves,
to the bark, to the roots is used.

Now, the other plant is peony.

Now, we know it for its beautiful
flowers, but within the Himalayas

it's often the root bark that is
used as a medicine, and I've had

quite a few trips actually looking
for samples of this because it is a
plant that has been over-exploited.

But in the Himalayas there is a real
issue with the continuing growth
and over-exploitation by man.

And therefore we could be losing
things that we haven't yet studied.

At the start of the 19th century,
almost nothing was known
about Himalayan plants.

Now, we are methodically
examining them all to see
how they might be of use to us.

As so few people live up here,
it was once thought

that the high altitude plants
were safe from exploitation.

But today,
there is a much greater threat.

As the climate warms, glaciers
are receding and the land no longer
suits the plants that evolved here.

But there is nowhere else
for them to grow.

With climatic changes threatening
thousands of plant species worldwide,

Kew has embarked on
the most ambitious of
all plant conservation projects.

The Millennium Seed Bank
at Wakehurst Place,

Kew's base in West Sussex,
holds more than a million seeds.

We know, as seed bank people,

that you don't have to lose plants,
you don't have to lose them.

We can use seed banks

to make sure that these plants
don't go extinct.

Here, seeds arrive from plant-hunters
working all around the world,
to be catalogued and bar-coded.

Each batch is carefully sifted
and cleaned.

Then they are X-rayed to ensure that
there's no contamination by insects
that might harm them.

Only after everything
has been checked
are they banked for the future.

In an underground vault, they are
kept dormant at minus 20 degrees.

Essentially what seeds are,
are they're little time capsules.

Plants can survive for centuries
using their seed

and we accentuate that ability

and we've learnt a lot
about seeds such that we can
actually spin that process out.

We know that we can keep seeds
alive for 1,000 years.

The Millennium Seed Bank has already
ensured that 54,000 species of plants

are safe from extinction.

'The seed bank is just the first
step, because we have to make sure

'that we can turn them
back into plants.

'There's no good having
1.6 billion seeds
sitting in a fridge downstairs,'

but it's our first stepping stone
to them turning those species
back into real plants.

Each seed is valuable.

As plants continue to provide food,
fresh air, habitat stability,

even medicines,

we know we need them for our future.

Their time capsules
may even hold the key to problems
that we have yet to face.