Tara & The Rock Climbers of Jawai

Jawai, Rajasthan

If you want an interesting wildlife destination, it doesn’t come as offbeat as Jawai, situated among the granite hills of Rajasthan which is perfect camouflage for Leopards because the hills and animals are of similar colour and pattern.(Pics : 1 to 6) It’s no surprise then that leopards have called these hills home for eons despite the lack of trees to climb on. The people of these hills, the Rebari tribe are traditionally nomadic sheep herders. Where it gets interesting is that the people and leopards have coexisted here pretty much with an understanding and respect for each other. Well, nomadic lifestyles end with land and property ownership that come with modernization and that throws the spanner in the works of systems in place for donkey’s time. Pity, no beast can ever lay claim to his ancestral abode but that’s another story.

So what we have here is barren granite rocky hills which were of not much use occupied by fifty or so leopards. Wildlife tourism came into play, big names got involved and started buying or leasing this land and developing hotels, resorts and even leasing leopard’s layers. Soon everyone was getting in on the game and the poor leopard didn’t know that the building under the hill was being built to watch her, or why miraculously every evening, she would find chicken, well within her territory, tied to a tree. As far as she was concerned, she was : “winner winner, chicken dinner” daily. No need to go anywhere, just sit around and pose. It’s not a forest, not a reserve, they were in people’s properties. Now what? Hey It’s Wild. It’s the West, It’s Jawai.

The story of this place is still taking shape and I love it there. Things are changing in Jawai. Someone seems to have rung a bell somewhere and I think it’s time to go back in a couple of weeks to take in the change. The number of properties listed online for tourism in close vicinity of the leopards seems to have decreased. I, hope to see this kitten, Tara  (Pics : 7 to 12). Isn’t she just the prettiest big cat? To me, she is. I was dumbfounded by her beauty and grace. We watched her the whole afternoon from the opposing hill and I swear, till date I have not seen another cat who looks as good as her or moves with so much of an air of danger around her. She’s scary Beautiful.

Tara’s predicament is tied to my tale of Jawai. See, my girl has no resorts around her yet. However, she also had no cubs till recently. Rumor mill said that the nearby village of herders, who cannot be nomads anymore, didn’t want more kittens around for fear of their now located children’s lives. So they would give her a little something from time to time to make sure she wouldn’t conceive for the longest time. Tara’s situation seems to have changed finally and I hope to see her and her now 10 month old first born.

I can’t take a side in this. This is too complex a situation for me being an outsider to opinionate on. I just hope that the reasonable coexistence between the two dominant species here continues before greed ruins the whole scene completely for everyone. The leopards will run off and the people will be left with a ghost town full of empty buildings and swimming pools like in China.