Please subscribehere.Avoid stress by arranging support from locals with established connections. This year, a new survey began throughout the 12 range nations to finally determine its population.Ulley, a high-altitude hamlet in the far north of India, has noleopard season, which runs from December through March. We humans are not.It’s really that simple,” Sharma, the co-owner adds, and that’s why there are limits to the infrastructure. From Los Angeles, I flew to Delhi, then took an early flight with Go Air over the mountains to Leh, Ladakh’s capital, which sits 12,000 feet up. And when he howls, I howl back. Although this is the safe side of J&K, an army base a few hours’ drive distant was hit by separatists the day before I arrived.Central Asia is a thrilling place to spend a few weeks, but it’s not without danger. I signed with Global Rescue, which.
guarantees a helicopter evacuation as long as you can contact them via Wi-Fi or phone.One wolf disappears into the rocks; the other trots up the ridge.35 million. “Next time,” he promised, before I loaded up my gear.I wouldn’t be here if not for the stories I soaked up from such pioneers as Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, from reading Into Thin Air in my teens, and from climbing 18,000 feet to Nepal’s Everest Base Camp in 2013. The sun was setting, and a 40-odd-mile drive through pitch black was still ahead.”On my second-to-last day, I still hadn’t seen any cats in the wild.78Shares.From Leh, Ulley is a two-hour drive past turquoise rivers, army bases, and high passes where the paved roads eventually end and the ruggedness of these mountains really hits. It’s part of a district called Ladakh, “the land of high passes” to locals, in India’s state of Jammu & Kashmir.”Anything to see shan becomes my mantra. You get the same chances at snow leopard sightings, but the lodge holds 22 visitors, compared to Hemis’s sometimes wall-to-wall trekkers. Thanks to a score of Bollywood films produced in Ladakh, they come in search of big-screen locales that seem tailor-made for Instagram.
I kept pushing the departure, hoping Norboo and the boys would catch a glimpse. I climbed three peaks of at least 10,000 feet in the months before the trip, which was ideal, but even a few car rides to the selected altitude helps. So far, I’ve found golden eagles, red foxes, ibex, urial, and now wolves, but shan, as the locals call them, remain elusive. I barely notice as Stanzin points at the dirt. As soon as possible, take the antibiotic diamox to battle shortness of breath and dizziness. With heat-trapping fur and bodies teeming with red blood cells, snow leopards are upper-atmosphere equipped.If this stirs a hunger to explore, keep in mind that training ahead of time will go a long way. “And it’s harder to sleep on the ground—and colder. | flickrMost visitors travel in summer, but I’ve come at the end of winter because the snow makes this the best time to track cats. Even if you only plan on walking from bed to your 4X4, get into shape. If the roads were paved and the resorts were all five-star properties, the animals wouldn’t be here. Most stay for about a week, but Indians from neighboring states often drive up for day safaris. It’s not as wide, but it may be more striking visually. The rise is mostly due to travelers from India, nearly 2 million of which visited in 2016, according to local authorities. The weather had changed, and a cold front brought light flurries.I set up six remote camera traps from a trio of outfitters—Reconyx, Cuddeback, and Spypoint—and ended up getting photos that proved these ghosts were real, stepping in the same dirt and ice that they had. “Strange not to have snow this time of year. The cold keeps the masses at bay, and every summer, Ladakh explodes with trekkers, bikers, and Instagram-happy tourists. No one knows how many there are, because the land is too challenging to accurately conduct such studies. Pex-Al-Pex Pipes Factory; BloombergThePrint’s YouTube channel is now active and buzzing.
The sooner you take it—rest and drink three liters daily—the sooner you’ll adjust. As many as 30,000 plastic bottles are dumped in open-air landfills each summer.The snow leopard population is said to be less than 8,000. “Not bad for a Westerner,” says Stanzin, Norboo’s middle son, who leads me along the ridge. I work my nerve and head into the void the next morning, PixabayThe mountains are not for the squeamish. With crows feet forming around his almond-shaped brown eyes, Norboo looked disappointed. There were 16,449 tourists in 1994; in 2016, more than 2. Push yourself, but don’t overdo it.“Hemis unfortunately is like a tourist trap,” warns Misty Dhillon, who runs the Himalayan Outback, the tour operator that helped guide my choices.No snow means snow leopards will stay hidden.” Leopard scat, wisps of hair, paw prints—but no specter. And for nearly two weeks, I hiked up and down the surrounding peaks, over frozen streams, past bones from yaks and horses and ibex picked clean by hungry predators. What I’m after needs the safety these mountains provide. I spent six hours scrambling up and down loose rock with Stanzin, a survival situation in the making, and I knew I was pushing it. Since opening in 2007, Sharma has had many moments like this one, but he still smiles so wide that his handlebar mustache practically dances. Their coats—patches of red, brown, and white keep them blended, a rippling optical illusion. Fresh. I pictured them laughing on some steep perch.This is the Himalayas in all their isolating charm, a speck on a mountainous map where even borders are state secrets. With so many monasteries and pastoralist Buddhist villages, you’d think this must be how Tibet looked before China invaded.Tourism here opened only in 1974, and the barrier helped to preserve culture and wildlife. Why?“No snow,” explains Morup Namgail,A female leopard was visible from the same place I had stood with Norboo just hours before. With 650-plus homestays in about 4,300 Ladakhi homes, a cottage industry for incredibly poor subsistence farmers has sprouted, but it’s one without answers for the trash that tourism creates. At the lodge, there’s a $200 per person fee toward this project.On my sixth day in the mountains, a pair of Tibetan wolves emerges from the frozen valley and saunters past, just a few hundred yards away. It’s usually a mix of Europeans, Americans, and Indians. But after an unseasonably warm week, Norboo points to a dusted peak on the other side of the valley. Wildlife tourism—and 4K photography via Planet Earth and National Geographic—have spawned a generation of well-heeled tenderfoots like me who have grown calluses while attempting to recreate that magic. And don’t drink.The snow leopard was removed from the list of endangered species last year. Temperatures during the day reached only the low 40s F before dipping below freezing at night, so bring plenty of wool. Altitude and cold are exhausting, even if you’re tracking creatures by SUV instead of foot