The Urban spots

Leopards is another elusive cat which has been high above in the man-animal conflict chain. So, to reduce the same, an amazing project was conceptualised in Rajasthan, Jaipur. Jhalana Forest Reserve (JFR) presents the characteristics of island biogeography in the heart of Jaipur, which is a city of 3.1 million people.

While I was in enrolling form a conference in Jaipur, I took my chance to visit this place. At random got a connect on Facebook and decided to check this place. When I reach the place, a very enthusiastic gentlemen Rohit & Kunal Ganwal greeted me, saying that don’t worry if you are lucky you will definitely see a leopard, sighting has been very good. It was the month of Aug and the forest was green, electrifying green, I was lucky to have sightings in 3 out of 4 safaris. We even watched the leopard trying to jump on a peafowl and then saw it tracking to a nest to have the egg.

The best incident which I encountered in Jhalana was in the summers of 2019. We were at the end of our strengths, we were about to drive back to the gate. Suddenly spotted that few jeeps were standing near a hillock and seeing something at a height. We sprinted to the location, there was a leopard preying on a bluebull / Nilgai. It was so well camouflaged that the Nilgai was 10 mts with in the striking range completely unaware of her presence. Then within a flash of the second, the bluebell noticed and ran away in a breakneck speed and denied leopardess ( Flora ) a healthy meal. Managed a fame with both together in extreme low light. Later on I came to know that though it was preying but generally leopards don’t kill male Nilgai’s as they are stronger and their meat is very tough, however Flora had 3 cubs waiting for food, so the attempt was desperate.

The first picture in the gallery if where Flora was preying the Blue-bull, the noise of the safari gypsy made both to look at us.