STH activities: IMI's Sustainable Mountain Development Summit (SMDS) IX and the Disaster Risk Reduction Session

The Sustainable Mountain Development Summit (SMDS) is one of the flagship programs of IMI and SMDS IX along with the Youth Summit kicked off from Uttarakhand on 08Dec and ended on 14Dec2020. The 6 day event went off smoothly without any major technical hiccups or internet outages because the whole program was held virtually due to the pandemic.
The Darjeeling HImalaya Initiative which is the W Bengal State chapter of IMI was responsible for organizing and conduct of Disaster Risk Reduction session on Day -2 of the summit and we had as our main speakers an amazing line up of resource persons:

The Facebook link of the event is here

Many thanks to the resource persons and speakers during our session.Thanks also to Roshan our incomparable compere and Shreya for helping out resolve the technical issues. Our thanks to the young and vibrant IMI people from the Secretariat and of course our gratitude to the audience.

Praful Rao
Kalimpong district
Darjeeling - Kalimpong Himalaya

NOVEMBER RAIN of the region (2020)

We had a few storms in the Bay of Bengal (see previous posts) but they affected the southern states only and our region remained absolutely dry with no rain in the entire region except for North Sikkim receiving rain on

18Nov (in mm)
Mangan -  24.2, Chungtang-  5.8, Shipgyer-  5.2, Singhik-  19.4
19Nov (in mm)
Mangan-  4.2, Shipgyer-  8, Singhik-  3.6

Praful Rao with Ms Shreya Gurung,
Kalimpong district
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya

End of the year storms in the Bay : CYCLONES "NIVAR' (23-26Nov) & "BUREVI" (02-04Dec)

The LOW pressure on 23Nov2020 which eventually intensified in CYCLONE 'NIVAR'

 

An extraordinary photo - almost seems as if the legendary landscape photographer ANSEL ADAMS (1902-1984) shot the image from heaven.

CYCLONE 'BUREVI' (02Dec-04Dec2020)

Praful Rao
Kalimpong District
Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya