All Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian – 14
By NITIN GAIROLA
These days almost everyone in our Doon Valley is either talking or thinking about leopards, so I thought I should look back at all the places where I had my own leopard encounters in the wild. It just so happens that most of these places were in Africa, from the Masai Mara in Kenya to the Serengeti in Tanzania, Kidepo and Queen Elizabeth National Parks in Uganda, and South Luangwa in Zambia, besides a few other on this primordial continent.
The leopard is a very elusive cat and essentially nocturnal in nature, but we have spotted it many times on our safaris, so in a way we can say that we are lucky with leopards. However, there was one time when we hoped and prayed that we wouldn’t spot the leopard nor he spot us, but that’s for later.
In our very first safari on our first African trip to Kenya, we had got a sign that we were going to be ‘leopard lucky’ in this life. Within an hour into that evening safari, we saw this feline atop a tree, growling and glaring down on our jeep. I got some amazing photographs which I felt captured the intensity of this beautiful beast.
Later, the endless plains of Serengeti in Tanzania turned out to be a leopard paradise for us. We got so many sightings that even our guide was a bit taken aback. We saw a leopard dragging its kill onto a tree, another gracefully coming down a branch and one that passed us right in front of our jeep (and our eyes) in broad daylight.
But there was one incident in Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park that got us scared out of our wits. We had made an impulsive decision to head to this park on our tour of Central Africa and upon reaching there were told that all the camps had been booked already. So, the jeep driver found us a rundown dormitory just outside the park limits and the place was absolutely empty and unoccupied (not surprisingly considering its condition). We thought at least we would get some sleep here and would wake up fresh for our morning game drive.
night safari.
So, the night fell and we slept, quite tired from our journey the previous day. Then around 2 in the morning, I heard a low growl right outside our bedroom window. While I was excited, I soon realised that one of the windows had 3 of its glass shutters missing and the same window didn’t have any iron bars either. The other 2 windows were intact, is what I could recollect. I wasn’t sure if there was enough space for a leopard to get in from the broken window, but I didn’t dare go near it to find out. To make matters worse, I couldn’t recall if the main door to the hallway had a latch or not. This meant that we couldn’t even go out of the bedroom and into the hall and so were properly trapped.
This surely was the scariest night of my life and I didn’t get much sleep after 2 a.m. and, later, Richa had also woken up. By around 5 in the morning, the dawn was breaking and the growling had died down and we were breathing again (yes, it was much more than breathing a sigh of relief). I knew we were safe then and I can’t tell you how happy we felt when we heard the sound of the jeep rolling in. Once outside, I did examine the window and saw the missing shutters and felt a medium sized leopard may have squeezed in since it’s a cat after all. We consider this a narrow escape and again we got ‘leopard lucky’, but in a different way.
Years later we had gone to South Luangwa National Park in Zambia, which is famous for its leopard sightings. There, we even did night safari drives and walking tours too, with Zambia being one of the few countries that allow such amazing safaris. The park lived up to its reputation and we had no less than 4 leopard encounters during our 5 days and nights in South Luangwa.
So, as you can see, I am totally in awe of this magnificent and mysterious feline and also happy that our own national parks in India are the homes of many such leopards as well. I just pray that these beautiful beasts do not cross the park boundaries since it invariably leads to human-wildlife conflicts, which rarely end well.
(Nitin Gairola is from Dehradun and has travelled the natural world more than almost any Indian ever. He has set world travel records certified by India Book of Records, has written for Lonely Planet, and holds National Geographic conservation certifications. He is also a senior corporate executive in an MNC and, in his early days, used to be a published poet as well. More than anything else, he loves his Himalayan home.)
