In search of snow leopards.

I’m not sure what woke me, the first rays of dawn peeking through my tent or the commotion in the camp.

Bleary eyed I looked at my watch? The immortal words of Adrian Cronauer played by the inimitable Robin Williams in Good Morning Vietnam ran through my head. “It’s o six thirty, what does the o stand for? Oh my God it’s early!!” Why is there so much activity anyway? Then I heard the voice of our tour leader Valerie. “Snow leopard!”

Our campsite is situated at the junction of 3 valleys and the spotters, Jingmet, Chospal & Wangali rise at the crack of dawn to position themselves on spotters hill just above our camp to scan the mountainsides for snow leopards.

They’re quick this morning, I do wish the snow leopards would have the courtesy of giving us a lie in, they had us up at 7 am yesterday too! We’ve been fortunate thus far, this is day 3 and we’re 3 for 3! Sightings every day, this is by no means guaranteed so I remind myself why we’re here and after a leopard like stretch I extricate myself from my sleeping bag.

I start by removing everything from my sleeping bag that I cocooned with me to prevent them from freezing overnight, mainly camera batteries and wet wipes ( I learned the hard way on day 1 when my wet wipes turned in to a block of ice). Camping at 4000 metres in the Himalayas in the depths of winter is not for the faint hearted. Once the Sun goes down the temperatures plummet to –25 Celsius. A 5 season sleeping bag, external blankets, hot water bottle and sleeping fully clothed is required. As I don my snow boots the cooks assistants turn up at my tent with morning tea. Excellent timing lads, black with two sugars please!

As it turns out we have a short trek this morning, the leopard is on the ridge right above our camp so spotters hill is the place to be. We make our way up and then go through the ritual of looking through the spotters scopes hoping that we can see what the eagle eyed Wangali can see. Snow leopards are known as ghosts of the mountains for a good reason, they have incredible camouflage and are extremely elusive. This is no normal safari and we’re unlikely to see them with the naked eye, the spotters ability to find them and track them from such a distance with their scopes is truly remarkable.

We’re in luck this morning, the snow leopard is ambling along the ridge silhouetted against the morning Himalayan sky. I track him as he meanders along occasionally leaping from one boulder to another before disappearing behind the ridge. He reappears 5 minutes later according to Wangali but I can’t see him. Wangali points me in the right direction and I can see the tip of his tail behind a bush before he leaps on to a ridge where he can survey the entire valley. He is suddenly full of intent when Jingmet spots a blue sheep approximately 100 yards below him and before we know it he’s in stalking mode. We lose track of time as we observe the eternal dance of predator and prey, the stealth and patience of the leopard, the obliviousness of the sheep. The morning passes, the leopard getting ever closer to the sheep when finally, inexplicably, he calls off the hunt. Something wasn’t right! The sheep, blissfully unaware of the danger lives another day.

Just as we begin to relax, Chospal calls everyone to his scope. There’s a mother and cub lying on a rocky mound on the snowy mountainside. They’ve been there all along and we had no idea. The mother starts to walk across the mountainside and is clearly visible as a dot against the snowy slope. She makes her way to the carcass of a blue sheep that was killed overnight and then calls her cub to follow.

As we watch the most elusive of big cats an awestruck silence descends among us as we collectively reflect on this moment. There are few corners left on this planet where true silence can be experienced. In a wilderness unencumbered by phone signals or WiFi the rest of the world ceases to exist, it’s so much more than the mere absence of sound. At that moment I remember a question a friend asked me a number of years previously. “JP, do you ever go on a normal holiday?”.

Suddenly the silence is broken by the shrill call of a Golden Eagle soaring overhead! Typical, there’s always one! As I return to my sense of place, 4000 metres above sea level in the Indian Himalayas observing a snow leopard mother and cub I smile to myself. Right now, there’s nowhere else I would rather be! What’s normal anyway?

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