Jhalana Leopard Reserve – A measured spoon of sugar

On 27^th December, 2022, we set out on a road trip to Jaipur with friends and man’s best friend. Srijan’s friend Kunal joined us with his girlfriend Harini and her their dog Scarlet – young dalmation of 2 years. They were travelling in the other car with a driver. In ours we had Srijan, me and Srijan’s friend Madhav who had come down for vacation from Sweden.

We stayed at this resort called Tree of Life. It was in the outskirts of Jaipur near the Lohagarh Fort, Kukas, Rajasthan. It was a dog friendly resort. That means dogs were greeted with bowls of water to drink and a dog menu. On stepping on to the property, while our rooms were getting ready, I decided to explore with my DSLR. Hoping to find some birds. I spotted a laughing dove ( I think- saw no rings on its neck), I clicked a white bellied drongo perched on neem branch. Thankfully my close proximity to the tree didn’t scare it off. Its partner was on the branch a little away from it. It was a bright sunny day. As I walked further on the property, I spotted the usual suspects, atleast 20 jungle babblers spread across, a white throated kingfisher swiftly flying past the reception water lily pond which had orange and black long fishes, Asian pied starlings, couple of purple sunbirds chirping on the trees. A rufous treepie was lost somewhere between the trees. A trusty magpie robin. I inquired about owls if any on the property. The lady showing us the property wasn’t aware about the same. We were shown our room- Villa No.1- Amaltas. There were pictures of the construction of the resort and the villa. I soon knew why there were no owls on the property. This was a recent construction. All elevations were manmade. A closer look told you that there were mostly shrubs which had grown in size. The property didn’t not of any of the long standing sturdy big trees which make an ideal haunt for owls known to nest in one place for 30 years as well.

When we left for the city the next day, I spotted three hanging nests belonging to the baya weaver birds.

On 29^th we were on our way to Jhalana Leopard Reserve for an afternoon Safari. May 2022 was the last time I had taken the safari in Corbett with my in-laws. No luck no tiger. Due to my SI joint pain, I had taken it a little easy and had decided to not go for any safaris. However here we were, many physio exercises later. Actually, this year we had taken 4 major safaris. Two to Ranthambore and two to Corbett, out of this my birthday trip to Ranthambore turned out to be the most memorable one with the best ever sightings of tigers. Three fairly expensive safari trips went fairly empty handed atleast when it came to tigers and leopards- the prime attraction. So, I was a little skeptical. Because we were travelling with friends who were doing this primarily because of us. We wanted them to see something significant- a leopard in this case. For us also I didn’t want to go empty handed. Even if one safari, my aim was to see atleast one leopard, a glimpse would do. But don’t want to go empty handed. For the booking Srijan had sent all our IDs to the guy who was helping us out with this. On the morning of our safari, I was told that incidentally our booking had been named in my name. Out of all the IDs sent either my name was picked up or that guy made it happen. I’ll never know. But I told myself in the spirit of positivity, that my birthday was lucky and now my name will be lucky too. I will definitely get a good sighting. Since we are on the topic trivia, let me just mention that it was also the anniversary of my chacha and chachi and birthday of their younger son and my cousin Dheer.

Jhalana is a fairly small forest area. It is spread over 23 s km. It has three -four zones. As we entered the main reserve gate we were greeted by cheeky 20 langurs sitting on the side wall. There were two neel gais as well. We were waiting outside zone 1 but our driver decided to take route of zone 2. We had been told there had been a kill in zone 1 in the morning. But the driver decided to go to zone 2. So off we went. In zone 2 we saw some neel gai, many langurs on the fallen tree logs, spotted deers, sambhar, many birds. Amongst birds we saw greater coucal quenching its thirst by a water hole. We saw a family of grey francolin marching on the dusty path made for safari jeeps typically. It was a warm day so I was down to my lone half sleeve T-shirt. I was really enjoying the breeze in my hair and the sun on my face. Suddenly the drive brought back the old safari memories and the jungle brought the calm, the serenity. As my senses came alive to the variety of sounds around me, I unloaded my worries. I remembered why I love spending time with the nature so much. Nature is healing. No, truly. Almost as soon as I entered, I didn’t want to leave.

15 minutes into the jungle and no leopard news yet. As we entered deeper into the zone, all the safari jeeps crossing us shook their head to say that no leopards had been sighted by them. Thankfully, our driver got the hint and we sped out towards zone 1 where the kill had been this morning. 

We saw a safari jeep with camera persons. It turned out to be from Jan TV a local news channel. We were intrigued. They seemed to have spotted leopard as they had their camera pointed towards the right. We were told that there were three leopards. At first we saw a glimpse of the first one. Excitement kicked in and more than that I was relieved that atleast I was not going empty handed. I was pleasantly surprised at our luck. This leopard was the 8-9 month-old Sangha. It raised its head and then moved it a bit before finally settling down in the parched vegetation. Soon we spotted Agni the female leopard also an 8–9-month-old baby. She gave us a bit of a show. Moved her head around and started walking backwards, away from us. This ensured some pictures. We peered to see if we could spot Bahadur – their father. But he was no where to be seen. We moved about 20 metres ahead close to the kill near the massive rock mountain. Someone pointed out Bahadur right at top of mountain hanging its forelegs on either side of a rock edge. It was near the green cactus. For one hour we waited for it to come down. It was sitting on a sunny spot and even as the sun went down bahadur kept sitting on the sun warmed rock. Not budging, eyes on us, it’s kill and probably on its babies agni and sangha- who’s mother was mrs khan - not present at the site. As it was 5:15- we decided to leave bahadur alone - he was probably smarter than us and knew that sunset meant our departure and when he could come down from his warm rock and descend to feast on the remaining kill again. Meanwhile a shikra, many rufous treepie an and many red vented bulbuls were flying about.

According to Sanjay gubbi there are about 20000 leopards in India with 2500 being in Karnataka itself which is quite high. In his book he gives a lot of interesting facts about the mistaken cat. I’ve already bought a copy of the same.

Later that day we were all discussing the difference between a leopard and Cheetah. Well India had recently imported Cheetahs from Namibia in two batches and in 2023 March, Siyaya the cheetah gave birth to four beautiful cubs. Both Srijan and I had seen the Cheetah in action at Serengeti in 2018 February. We had seen a leopard too but at quite a distance. Prima facie I concluded that Cheetahs are more friendly with human presence while the leopards are more elusive. However, the differences between these two most confused with cats is deeper than that. Leopards are well rounded animals, cheetahs are slenderer. The latter have a distinctly thin waist and a smaller mouth with distinctive tear marks around the eyes that are absent in the leopard. The spots on the leopard resemble rosette while spots on the Cheetah are well rounded and solid in look. The tail of the cheetah is flatter in comparison to tubular tail of leopard. Cheetahs claws are always visible while those of leopards are retractable and therefore not discernible in it’s pugmarks.

By the evening the weather was cool. A little bit of clouds…beautiful blue sky just like the interiors of palladio Jaipur.

It was a lucky spotting by our ranger. We saw a nightjar resting peacefully. Before he could say out the name aloud and amidst others asking which bird it was, I smiled and said nightjar, nightjar, it’s a nightjar, my eyes transfixed and my hands scrambling for the camera.

Apparently, there are 97 varieties of nightjars in the world. We saw a jungle night jar. It is one of the 10 nightjar species found in India. It was mostly black and white greyish with a little bit of brownish red on the edges.

I took 5-6 clicks and it didn’t move. It was on a branch. Completely merging. It seemed as it was a burnt portion of wood still hanging on to its branch. This sighting really made my day. This was my first sighting of nightjar and for that I am very grateful. Unlike other birds it was resting lengthwise on the branch in order to camouflage better. And it was roosting on tree unlike on the ground.