ON THE PLANET
Then, on day three, the sign we’ve been waiting for: fresh pugmarks in the snow. Overnight, a snow leopard has crossed the very road we walked yesterday afternoon. “We know this male,” says David, pointing out his yellow-stained signature. “He climbed up there last night, hunting ibex.” I follow his gaze, tracing the trail up a gully until it is lost to all sight except Norbu’s.
Back in Leh, three days earlier, we’d visited the Snow Leopard Conservancy, where Tsewang Namgail told us how he’d once reviled snow leopards. An attack on his uncle’s village had once left 12 sheep dead. Today, he is helping this NGO address the man-creature conflict through initiatives such as community education and ecotourism projects that offer incentives for poor villages to protect their
wildlife.
THE PROWLING PROFILE
them, sparking a mini avalanche as they gallop across a gully and leap up a cliff on the other side, stopping as one to stare back the way they came. “Shan!” breathes Norbu, eyes glued to his scope. No translation needed. But where?
David relays Norbu’s directions and we all scramble for shared reference points in the distant jumble of rock and snow.
“You see that gully, to the left. Below that slab of cliff — looks like a map of Australia.”
A new animal enters my binocular field from stage right. The details are hard to make out but there’s no mistaking that low, prowling profile — nor the huge tail, still switching with the irritation of an ambush thwarted. There are gasps as we all get on to it, watching together as the cat pauses at the foot of a cliff then springs up in two fluid bounds to a ledge. It may be 1km away, but it’s a thrilling sight. High fives all round.
For another hour, we peer through the scopes in hope that it might jump down and come closer. But clearly it is doing what cats do best: curling up for a snooze. And, as the cloud rolls in, we are forced to call it a day.
Back at the lodge we peer at each other’s photos. None of our shots will be going up on the wall. But close-ups miss the point. The snow leopard is an animal of vast landscapes, the living embodiment of the wild and unreachable. To have watched one moving against its grand mountain backdrop, its prey scattering before it … my heart is still racing.