The Last Honey Hunter (Behind the Scenes) ft. Renan Ozturk and Mark Synnott

[Music] [Music] I'm Vernon I'm a filmmaker and a climber I've been coming to Nepal for about 15 years mostly to climb in the high-end Alea this time we set out to explore a lesser known culture those who aren't in the limelight of Mount Everest and his way of life is under threat of disappearing we counted Malin I counted today 14 beehives most of which are like 16 diameter [Music] somehow that's been a rant that I am going down onto the cliff on a rope to do some filming which is not really my forte honey hunters harvest the hallucinogenic honey off the cliff faces in this region but it's not going to last forever and we heard that this might be the last honey harvest ever to happen this very solid going in and I'm super lucky to be the writer on this because it's really easy to B's right compared to being Renaud normally I'm the one struggling with a video camera but on this project I got the opportunity to shoot my first stills assignment super intense it's hard having no idea what's going on and destroying them respect everything you're doing and it has a purpose greater than us [Music] the greater meaning the thing that we so desperately did not want to fail in documenting was the story of Maui the last person in this region who can still harvest my honey [Applause] the problem was how we were going to get the shots we need without disrespecting the local culture hurting ourselves or even worse harming Nalle we usually don't just spin the globe and point our finger when finding new places to explore most often it comes from some kind of a personal connection like our friend Ben Ayers had for this village it's like the school [Music] to get to the cliffs we left the comfort of the village and hiked 12 miles deep into the jungle they showed us what was going to hold our bodyweight and we could pull on in this steep jungle terrain these guys are like the ultimate survivors so stick with them don't wander off on your own and you'll be well reach [Music] I'm really confused by you ponytail ball after a shamanic ceremony in spilling the blood of a few sacrificial chickens the forest spirits were ready to accept us onto their cliffs or so we hoped it's gonna be like one of the interesting days of all our lives in it oh I'm excited to have Sam a little nervous I'm not is that yes we call ourselves professional climbers but we couldn't even follow them up the steep jungle cliffs so they put our ropes up for us tied by mysterious knots onto tiny shrubs and tree roots yep yeah there's a little twinge of nervousness inside of me I've never done anything like this before I believe my army doesn't as muscle muscle do not under 130 so much doing smoke the time okay we're completing they're looking at us thinking our gear is crazy I'm going down into space and we're looking at them thinking the same thing with their hand woven bamboo ropes be careful man Joe legs love them all [Music] when we finally went down onto the cliff it was so overhanging that we were just spinning in space unable to stabilize it was impossible to get a shot we were only facing the action for 10 seconds out at least one minute rotation eventually we figured out that hanging two people in space was the way to go using one person as ballast to kick off of this is the most out of control yet humming the chief right through the hood we found out that these Himalayan honeybees the largest in the world could sting through our American bee suits we came down and tried to add more clothing under our suits but even that didn't help okay or something on my drawing during the basis when you look at him and you see the bees all over them and see that they're stinging all over your bee suit and you think they're eating the guy alive gotta be hockey hitting he's free soloing right now despite all the challenges we faced we still had all of our ultra modern equipment mela Don didn't have any of that he believed in the protection of something I'll never understand three any time when you felt were local I just looked at male without the bee suit on the bamboo ladder with no harness the bounty from the harvest is used for its medicinal properties and to sell to support the community in this films would like a 10-year dream has known my lead on for that long I had tears in my eyes and feel so lucky to be able to do this [Music] [Music] you you

Channel: The North Face

Views: 2,520,400

Rating: 4.8333583 out of 5

Keywords: the last honey hunter, the last honey hunter behind the scenes, renan ozturk, Mauli Dhan, himalayas, nepal, nepal cliffs, himalayan mountains, Hallucinogenic Honey of the Himalayas, hallucinogenic, hallucinogenic honey, himalayan honey bee, honey, the last honey harvest, bees, bee hive, the north face, free soloing, behind the scenes, National Geographic, wild, documentary, explore, Expedition, rock climb, honeycomb, hunt, hunter, South Asia, Asia, Never Stop Exploring, Adventure, harvest

Id: QL-0TAw5rjg

Length: 9min 24sec (564 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 28 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/karione]

Related article was posted here 2 weeks ago https://www.reddit.com/r/Nepal/comments/6k17ta/the_last_deathdefying_honey_hunter_of_nepal/?ref=search_posts

[u/[deleted]]

Truly amazing! Thanks for sharing.

[u/strangem3at]

Can i find these in kathmandu or nearby?