On the edge of a remote mountain slope in northern India, a secretive cat becomes part of village life
Words and photos by PUSKAR BASU
T he sun had yet to appear on the horizon and I was already settled in position, concealed behind a boulder, my gaze fixed on a small stone house with an open window.
I rarely head into urban environments to photograph wildlife, but this was a special occasion. I had travelled to the village of Hanle, in Ladakh, northern India, which sits at an altitude of 4,500m in the Himalayan mountains. Life in this remote village, home to about 1,000 people, is not easy. From December to March, the landscape is locked in ice and snow, with temperatures dropping to -20˚C and lower.
The treeless plateau and surrounding peaks appear hostile, yet nurture surprising levels of biodiversity. Sporadic areas of marshland and gurgling mountain streams, fed by snowmelt, support a variety of species adapted to cope with the challenging conditions. There are wolves, foxes, marmots, pikas and raptors. There is also an elusive feline that claims the dubious honour of being the world’s grumpiest cat. The Pallas’s cat, known locally as Ribilik, is one of the most secretive small cats in India. Named after Peter Simon Pallas, the Prussian naturalist who described the species in 1776, it is exceptionally shy and rarely seen on this desolate plateau, with only a handful of chance sightings reported from Ladakh and the neighbouring state of Sikkim.
It is difficult to emphasise just how hard this cat is to see, owing to its myriad adaptations to life in the peaks. Like that other magical mountain cat, the snow leopard, it is as secretive as a ghost – so secretive that, prior to 2012, it had never been photographed. It has an extraordinary ability for camouflage, even in a near-featureless landscape, and is virtually impossible to detect even at close quarters. Lying still on the ground, a Pallas’s cat bears an uncanny resemblance to a rock – hence its alternative name of ‘rock wildcat’ – its patchy grey winter coat blending flawlessly into the texture of the bleak mountain desert. Its small, rounded ears, low on the head, are not particularly prominent and enable it to peep from behind boulders without being seen.
Even if you do manage to spot one, it won’t stick around for long. These cats usually occupy empty marmot and fox burrows, changing den-site every few days as they move to fresh huntin
