THE EXTRAORDINARY, ENDANGERED
INDOCHINESE LEOPARD
MARCH 2019
The Indochinese leopard, Panthera pardus delacouri, is a subspecies of leopard native to the dense bush areas and rocky outcrops of mainland Southeast Asia and southern China. It is one of the five species in the genus Panthera and a member of the Felidae family. It stands 60 to 80 centimeters high at the shoulder and weighs between 40 and 90 kilograms. The fur on the leopard’s back is almost rusty-red in color, but paler at the sides with small dots that are so close together that they look dark.

The mythic black leopard is the melanistic color variant of the big cat species, something quite common in dense tropical forest habitats, which gives them a selective advantage for ambush. The ancient Greeks believed the panther was one of the favored mounts of the god Dionysus, and the Greek word for “panther” could be interpreted as “every wild beast” – evoking the idea of a composite creature believed to be a hybrid of a lion and a panther. In Germany, the panther is frequently depicted in heraldry as a creature with four horns, cow’s ears, and a fiery red tongue. In some African cultures, the leopard is considered the king of animals, and it is often used as an attribute of leaders. The secret society Aniota is generally considered to be the source of legends about leopard men that are similar to Western werewolves.

The Indochinese leopard is incredibly adaptable, but it is also among the most persecuted big cats in the world. Small populations remain only in Cambodia, southern China, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Thailand. It is functionally extinct in Laos and Vietnam, with no viable populations remaining in the wild, and is suspected to have been eradicated in Singapore. The largest populations currently exist in peninsular Malaysia and the Northern Tenasserim Forest Complex on the border between Myanmar and Thailand, with smaller groups in eastern Cambodia. The species is threatened by rampant bushmeat poaching, conflicts with locals, poorly managed trophy hunting, and illegal killing for their skins and other body parts used for ceremonial regalia.

Leopards are listed as “Vulnerable” on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. It is classified as “Endangered” in Central Asia and Sri Lanka, and “Critically Endangered” in the Middle East, Russia, and on the Indonesian island of Java. Long-term solutions to save the Indochinese leopard could include eco-tourism in the remaining habitats to generate alternative income for local people and education programs highlighting the importance and benefits of protecting the local wildlife

 

ABOUT TREES
THE MYSTIC RIOLS

The Swintonia floribunda, also known as the Riol of the Cau Maa and the Muon of the Vietnamese, belongs to the Anacardiaceae family. On the Indochinese peninsula, the Riol is found in the Andaman Islands, Malaysia and Sumatra. In Vietnam, it is found primarily in the middle basin of the Dong Nai river (Daa’ Dööng) and in the provinces of Dong Nai and Lam Dong province, the heart of ancient Cau Maa’ country.

The Riol is a medium-sized tree, reaching around 40 meters with a diameter of five meters. It grows mainly on high wooded ridges, in schist and basalt terrain. It is also recognizable by its trunk, which can have steep plank buttresses up to two meters high.

The Riol loses its leaves after the last festivities of the agrarian cycle in January, and then immediately is covered with buds. After a month, its young foliage is resplendent in shades of red, pink, and ochre before turning green once again. The season of the Riol’s new leaves is reputed to be among the most beautiful of the year







           

SECRET INDOCHINA SUPPORTS
TRAVELERS AGAINST PLASTIC (TAP)

More than 100 million plastic bottles are used worldwide every day, and an estimated 1,500 plastic bottles end up as waste in landfills or thrown in the ocean every second. Almost 8 million metric tons of plastic end up in the world’s oceans each year, with the potential to kill as many as one million sea creatures. Over time, plastic breaks down into tiny particles called micro-plastics, which are found on shorelines around the planet. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. In the US alone, making plastic water bottles uses more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually – enough to fuel 100,000 American cars for a year.

Alarmed by these statistics, the Executive Directors of two US-based sustainable travel organizations (Crooked Trails and Wildland Adventures) have founded Travelers Against Plastic (TAP), a group of committed travelers who believe in making a positive impact while travelling. TAP is an outreach initiative which educates global travelers about the harmful impacts of using disposable plastic water bottles, and it encourages travelers to be prepared to clean their own drinking water. The vision is to catalyze a self-sustaining global movement resulting in the near-elimination of travelers’ dependence on disposable plastic water bottles. Today, TAP has become a sustainable travel campaign with over 500 individual pledgers and over 100 tour operators signed on to make travel more sustainable.

As part of our commitment to reducing our environmental impact, Secret Indochina has pledged to support TAP and lessen or eliminate single-use plastic in our operations starting in 2019


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THE RED GODS 
BY JEAN D'ESME 5
The Red Gods is an adventure novel by Jean d’Esme published in 1924. The son of a French civil servant working as a customs official in Indochina, Jean Marie Henri d’Esmenard studied in Paris. In 1914 he entered the Indochinese section of the Ecole coloniale (the Colonial School), which provided training for France’s future colonial administrators. He was drawn towards journalism and travel, eventually becoming well-known for his colonial novels such as The Red Gods , The Soul of the Bush, and The Barbarians.

The Red Gods opens in Saigon, in the inky darkness of a Cholon opium den, where a man named Pierre de Lursac tells a story of a fantastical adventure. He concludes his feverish tale by producing a mummified hand from an old bag as proof of its veracity, and then shoots himself in the head. De Lursac’s story begins a few months earlier, when, upon arriving in Saigon, he is sent to the unknown Moï Country to command Fort 32, an isolated fort situated at the foot of Mont Pou-Khas in the Anamneses Cordillera mountain range. On various explorations and adventures, de Lursac discovers a lost valley that is home to prehistoric woodmen and an ancient city lost in the jungle, where an enigmatic sorceress lives. What follows is a series of fantastic and disastrous events leading up to the mummified hand.


 
THE THREATENED, MARVELOUS 
ASIAN BLACK BEAR 5

The Red Gods is inspired by the old myth of a European adventurer reigning as king of a native tribe, in the spirit of Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would be King, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Up-There and Farewell to the King by Pierre Schoendoerffer, and Francis Ford Coppola’s epic war movie Apocalypse Now. At the same time, The Red Gods taps the mythology of the great Anamneses forest – a natural setting as hostile as it is marvelous, one which brings to the collective imagination the great divide between the plains and the mountains, the peoples of the delta and those of the mountains, civilization and barbarism, religion and animism, rationality and black magic. The Red Gods is also inspired by the accounts of the French explorer Henri Maitre: his masterpiece Les Jungles moï and his writings about the forest men: a strange story of savage men, hosts of the mountain forests [...] covered with thick ginger fur. They became rare and are no longer encountered, although occasionally their tracks can be found as those of other men.

These works, evocative tales and expanses of mountain forests with unknown peoples are an invitation to adventure travel. They are among the elements that have shaped the spirit and vision of Secret Indochina, especially the development of our logo inspired by an old cover of Heart of Darkness – a slow rising towards the unknown and improbable
Secret Indochina
Secret Indochina was established in 2011, following the encounter of two professionals, Tran Quang Hieu and Nicolas Vidal, passionate about authentic travel. Secret Indochina, DMC branch of Amica JSC, strives to lead travellers to outstanding sites, magical places, and little-known ethnic communities

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