Search For The Elusive Snow Leopard In Ladakh's Rumbak Valley

Ladakh: One breathe in and one out. The cold air fills my lungs and yet I feel like my chest is being squeezed and my head feels about five kilos heavier on my neck. Standing at over 3,600 meters in Hemis National Park, a high altitude national park in the eastern Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir, it is clear I am staring up at the roof of the world. I have about 800 to 1000 meters to climb to Rumbak village. A babbling stream singing notes no human voice can match rushes past me. Yellow flowers, purple flowers and soft green small shrubs and plants cover the slopes around me. I am told that the snow leopard frequents this spot. I look for some signs, scat, scuffs, pug marks but don't see any. I am told they are easier to see during the winter. I hear this from everybody I speak to in Ladakh. I know barring a miracle I am not going to see one but sometimes just walking in the footsteps of the ghost of the mountains, is reward enough, because, I mean, look where the footsteps bring me. To a glorious world of ice, mists, turquoise streams and rainbow mountains with shifting light.
  The climb is not as strenuous as I feared for my unfit body. We make it to Rumbak in good time, a whole day still spread out before us. A golden meadow greets us as we top a rise and I catch a glimpse of Rumbak. Bustling busy villagers work in their fields. I am told many of the folk are away with the livestock, who have been taken up to the high slopes to pasture lands to feed. Here they might lose a few sheep to the snow leopard or the wolves. It's when the 'shen' comes to the village and enters the animal pens (is an enclosure for holding livestock) where the animals are kept that causes problems. Inside the pen, the leopard surrounded by panicked sheep who cannot escape, who mill about agitated and scared, kills everything that moves or bumps into her. It's a cat reaction - a swipe here and a bite there. It's inevitable.
 
It's a crippling loss for the locals who own nothing much but their livestock. A dedicated World Wildlife Fund (WWF) India team is busy working with them trying to predator proof their pens to keep the leopards out. It's no fun for the villagers to stay up nights especially in winter trying to guard their livestock.

With the snow leopard getting on everyone's bucket list these days and the mountains anyway being a huge draw, the local people now get to organise home stays which earns them some steady and extra income. Between their Buddhist beliefs and gentle cultures and this added sense of the economic importance of the leopards, the Ladakhis have learnt to live mostly in peace with their wild neighbours.

The homes are simple. A large common room which is their kitchen seems to be the heart of the house. The shelfs glisten with copper Pots and pans and it's a display I am told of what is considered a family's treasures. Warm simple meals are made for us here and we eat with the family stumbling along in our Hindi versus their Ladakhi and yet a communication of sorts takes place

Do you see the snow leopard a lot, I asked a local. "Yes, I have been seeing them since I was a child. Well, they kill our livestock. But they have always been here. The last I saw one was a month ago when I was on the higher slopes. And last year during the winter season, it came right here, just in front of the house," answered a local. On asking if it is good that these leopards bring tourists, the local answered that it is good that they attract tourists.
 
We all lapse into silence imagining that. What for one set of people is common, is an absolute once in a lifetime situation for another.

The room we stay in has mattresses on the floor with piles of soft blankets. The big glass windows bring the mountains in. They know how to do a room with a view. The sky is such a startling blue with the whitest clouds I have ever seen. Grey thunder heads wait on the horizon however. Maybe rain here and snow up on the higher slopes is forecast.
 
The challenge here is the loo. Yes that's right, the loo. It's all dry composting toilets here - a room with two holes in the ground pretty high up. Soil in piles around one with a spade stuck in helpfully, and a toilet roll dribbling from a nail in the wall. The strange thing is that there's no smell, no filth. It is definitely a huge improvement on your average loo.  Due to the tough rocky terrain and lack of water as it's a cold dessert ecosystem, Ladakh originally only had dry loos. The advent of the army, tourists and other settlers from around the country brought in the flushing wet loos which have absolutely ruined the ground water quality in Ladakh with sewage run offs mixing into the water table. The water is unfit for consumption in Leh.

The real challenge of the loo was not that it was dry but that in the middle of the night with no electricity, aiming a torch, finishing up, grabbing toilet rolls and shoveling sand are skills that need high dexterity.

Our next stop was a high altitude wetland, lake Tsokar. The drive to get there was an exercise in rapture and nausea. Rapture from the ridiculously mind blowing natural splendor around one. The nausea from driving around hair pin bends at 4600 meters, on the second highest road in the world. My neck and head ache reached epic proportions and while I was contemplating how many aspirin to swallow, I saw men in Lycra on bicycles, not motorbikes. Was this a hallucination? Did altitude sickness mess with the brain? No, it was real and I was alive and freewheeling down a slope. All very well until one had to go uphill I suppose.
 As we dropped down to Tsokar, we were greeted by Kiang, the Tibetan wild Asses. Built more like zebras than mules, their caramel and white bodies bright as they gracefully trotted, their slender legs distorted by rising moisture waves as the mid-day sun heated the ground. The lake flashed green, blue and white. Driving in further now we were in a flat bowl ringed by mountains. Ice covered their peaks and a cold wind cut over the land. With watering eyes and cold hands clutching cameras we exited the car to walk around and shoot.
 A pair of black necked cranes and their young chicks is here. Bar headed geese flying. Ruddy shel drakes, white winged red starts and a few moorhen there. Curious marmots popping in an out like fat not scary jack in the boxes. Mousehares, the Guinea-pig-sized rabbits with short ears found only in high mountain terrain twitching and voles running around are a normal sight. We are told that in one village marmots had become so bold after being fed by tourists that they chased and bit people. Ferocious biting marmots! Now I had heard it all.
 
Ladakh like every other fragile ecosystem has its tough challenges now. The growing number of humans, tourism which is both a boon and bane is bringing garbage, sewage and bad behavior along with economic gain. The endangered wildlife and livestock existing in precarious is shifting balances, along with the looming threat of climate change. Leave a dessert to be a dessert. It knows what it's doing. Development with dams should ideally be read - Damned.

Through it all, the empress of the high slopes the snow leopard has reigned, and her presence as apex predator a crucial link in the functioning biodiversity of this ecosystem.

It was for me like standing at the gates of heaven, knowing my carbon footprint could bring hell. For now, simply the most beautiful place I had ever been to.