Dr. Senthil Kandeepan writes of his venture back into the wild in the lap of Jaipur, after many months’ alienation from Nature due to the pandemic, and the exhilarating date with a very special gentleman called Rana.
‘Kathrina’, ‘Mrs Khan’, ‘Simba’, ‘Rana’ – these names have nothing to do with Bollywood celebrities, but rather, are monikers of famous leopards at Jhalana leopard reserve, a unique wildlife retreat at the edge of Jaipur I was fortunate to visit after a long fruitless interlude of confinement to home due to the pandemic.
It had been exactly two years since I had used my camera. After such a long wait and the associated restlessness, I decided to get out and do what makes me happy: a connection with nature. It’s always exciting when I enter a jungle. But this time, I was extremely nervous as well.
Having a forest within such an urbanised, fast growing populated city like Jaipur – the capital of Rajasthan – itself is a great conservation story.
Jhalana, which is in the foothills of the Aravallis, used to be the hunting ground (game reserve) of the erstwhile royals and eminent guests during the 19th century, to hunt tigers and leopards. Records indicate that the last tigress was shot dead here in 1943 by Gayatri Devi, the erstwhile Maharani of Jaipur, from the ramparts of Shikar Oudhi.
Just as individual tigers can be identified by their stripes, leopards can be identified from their rosette pattern, which is unique for each individual.
And because locals and frequent visitors see these leopards regularly, they’ve come to identify and name them.
The safari gate opens at 6:45 am, but I reached the gate by 6 am, so that we were the first to be there.
Winters are extremely cold in this part of the county and the temperature on my first morning was a freezing 6℃. But I didn’t mind, because the first vehicle to enter the park when the gate opens has an advantage – should a leopard be encountered on a vehicle track, of which there is a heightened possibility in the early mornings and the late evenings, since leopards, like most other cats, are crepuscular and nocturnal, you have a clearer view. What’s more, you don’t have to chew up anybody else’s dust, which you must do on these dusty tracks if you’re in the wake of other vehicles.
We entered the gate on the dot, and I started talking to Cheetal, my driver-cum-guide. He told me that the sightings of leopards are generally terrific in the park, but the last two days had been dry. The implication is that we had a better chance today, since there had been no sightings in the last few days. Of course it’s either that, or: ‘chances are very limited today going by the trend of the last few days.’ Which line of interpretation you take depends entirely on your attitude. As for me, I always enter a jungle with zero expectations, but at the bottom of my heart, as with any wildlife enthusiast, I hope for a good day.
Time passed and a couple of hours later, nothing had happened, not just for me, but for anybody in the park (my driver was constantly getting news from his other friends and every call told the same tale: “no movement”).
I was telling Cheetal how fortunate I had been the last time I visited Jhalana (a couple of years back), when I was blessed with the sighting of a mother and two cubs on a kill. He said such sightings were very rare in Jhalana considering the limited area to which the public has access, and considering that leopards are shy animals, with many of them running away upon not just seeing, but even hearing a vehicle at most times.
Except, that is, the bold ones, one of whom is a 3-year-old male named Rana. He is very bold, Cheetal tells me, bold enough to walk before a vehicle straight down a jeep path. This sparks my imagination to the point that I am now filled with an unstoppable desire to see Rana, if not the other bold ones. Not knowing what’s in store, I console myself with the realisation that seeing a leopard you’ve just heard about is asking for a little too much.
Jhalana is an isolated and fragmented forest in an urban environment within the heart of Jaipur. A variety of faunal life can be found here, with the leopard as the apex predator, sitting pretty atop the food chain.
As per the forest department’s latest census (in 2019), there are at least 47 leopards in Jhalana, which is a very high number for a 20 sq.km forest area, but that doesn’t mean we can sight them easily, because like I mentioned earlier, they’re shy, and because we’re confined to the main vehicle tracks, you cannot see them even if they’re sitting just a few metres into the bush by the side of the road.
We needed to exit the park at the stipulated time of 9:15 am, and with the clock already striking five minutes past nine, and needing five minutes to reach the gate, we were left with merely minutes on our first safari, with my camera awaiting the first click in two years of patient waiting.
Soon our gypsy is left alone, and I’m the only tourist left in the jungle. Every other jeep had left disappointed, dubbing it another ‘no show’.
But I wasn’t losing hope. Because a crucial lesson I had learned in a decade of pursuing wildlife is that the jungle and the wildlife in it are unpredictable, and so you’re apt to keep your hope alive until you literally exit the gate. In the next few minutes, that hope, borne out of experience, was entirely vindicated.
My driver whispered, “This is Rana; we will just wait and he will come close.” And did he come close or what! So close that I couldn’t believe any leopard could be so bold! Before I realised it and had found my feet, my camera had already captured a beautiful catwalk down an imaginary ramp, and I had had my dream sighting of a leopard in exhilarating proximity! As he walked nonchalantly past us, looking at us all the way, it was time for us to rush to the gate.
I stayed back for a couple more days and on nearly every safari sighted leopards but nothing like Rana. At the end, the memory of his intrepid presence filled my mind as I packed my bags with a bunch of images to process until next time.
