Wild through my lens

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Spectacular ghost of the mountains

Spiti Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India — May 2022 — 23 photographs

This is one the best trip of our lifetime!!

We were on a road trip to Spiti from Bangalore in May 2022. We had set out from Bangalore to explore the landscapes around Spiti Valley. Visited all the usual places like Chitkul, Reckong Peo, Nako, Tabo and Kaza with overnight stay planned at Kaza.

While in Kaza, we enquired about the sightings of Snow Leopard and we were told its visible during Jan, Feb time. We have to be high up in Spiti mountains to see them.

Since we had the whole day at our disposal, we started driving around the high up places like Kmoic, Langza and Hikim where world's highest post office is located. Scenic beauty around these places are marvellous.

It was already around 5pm and after visiting the Hikim post office, we were driving back to Kaza. We were stopped by a biker from Kerala who saw us taking his picture (as he was taking picture of local shepherd boy!!) and he said you just missed a SNOW LEOPARD!! oh boy what a bad luck and we felt disappointed..

Our hunch was strong, and I started scanning the mountains with my telephoto lens to see if something is around. I could find a fresh blood of a kill on a mountain valley. It was fresh and my guess was some raptors like a Vulture or a Golden Eagle (which are found in these areas) around..

While scanning, I saw some hair like thing moving on top of a rock high up in the mountains. Took some shots to zoom and see what's in there..

Alas!!, It was a SNOW LEOPARD that was sitting on top of a rock high up in the mountains. We were so happy and started frantically taking pictures, went back and forth down and up the road to get some better angles. Met the biker again and showed him the Snow Leopard was sitting up the rock. As the light was fading, we could take some pictures and Snow Leopard also started moving in and around an abandoned monastery.

Then a Shepherd who was herding a huge bunch of sheeps told us that the Snow Leopard had hunted one of his sheeps and it was lying down below. He tried to get closer to the sheep kill so that at least he could get some wool and skin out of that.

Suddenly the Snow Leopard started moving down and jumped onto the kill and took it away inside the abandoned monastery.

All these time, we did not realise that the Snow Leopard was actually guarding its kill sitting atop the rock!!

What a spectacular scene that was. This is something we remember forever..