Crossing paths with the Ribilik

It was the month of August, 2012 when I first opened the book on Indian Mammals by Vivek Menon. This was the time when I entered the world of Indian naturalist history, starting off as an intern at Forsyth Lodge, Satpura. As with most beginners, I started off with the pages on cats. At that point I had no clue that there were fifteen species of wild felids in India. The pages on the smaller cats caught my attention immediately, the golden cat, marbled cat, the rusty; all of which were something I’ve never heard of before. One of those images caught my attention; it was the image of a strange looking cat clicked by Otto Pfister, the Pallas’s Cat. It took me a while to get the pronunciation right, both of the cat and the photographer. When I started asking around about the Pallas’s Cat to my colleagues and mentors, the answer was unanimous, ‘How many tines does a spotted deer have…learn that first’. I followed their words of wisdom and delved into the world of Central Indian wildlife. It was a great few months of learning that helped me secure a permanent spot alongside the well-oiled naturalists of Central India. My time in Satpura and Kanha brought me up close to many of the mammals that had caught my attention when I first opened India’s mammal bible. The tiger, the rusty-spotted cat, the jungle cat, leopard cat, the civets, otters etc. I knew I was hooked and there was no way out. In 2017, along with my colleague and friend David Raju, we brought out our own book on Photo Field Guide to Central Indian wildlife, a dream come true for me as my own curiosity was aroused because of spending long hours staring at wildlife images in books.

In early 2017, I got an offer to run the Snow Leopard Lodge in Ulley, Ladakh. After 6 years in Central Indian forests this was a welcome change and I switched bases immediately. Before I knew it, I was sitting on a plane that was landing between snow-capped peaks and taking a suicidal turn above the Indus to point towards the runway in Leh. I didn’t know this at that point, but I had come so much closer to that strange furry cat that had caught my attention on my first day at Satpura.

The company I had joined gave me a few months to travel around and familiarize myself with the trans-himalayan wilderness and culture of Ladakh. In this I had the help of Hashim Tyabji and Rahul Sharma, David Sonam of Leh and Dr.Tsewang Namgyal of the Snow Leopard Conservancy amongst many others. I travelled through most of the region encountering the ungulates of the region, wolves, foxes, snow leopards, brown bears, pikas, voles and many of the area’s unique avi fauna. I even had the chance of spending a good twenty minutes with the elusive Eurasian Otter, hunting in the blue waters of the Indus. One of these exploratory visits took me to the village of Hanley, close to the extreme eastern limit of the Changthang plateau. I had come here in search of the Tibetan Lark, the Tibetan Gazelle or Goa and a few special raptors. I was told by David Sonam before I left that that this was a place where the Pallas’s Cat or Ribilik, as the locals called it had been reported a few times in the past. With this bit of exciting information, my driver and spotter, Stanzin and I went there with high hopes and scoured the length and breadth of the marshes and hills around Hanley. We were successful with the initial targets but unfortunately couldn’t succeed in finding my cat. Sonam Dorje of Padma Homestay, a self taught birder and naturalist of the region, also tried helping us out in the search but we had to abandon it after a few days. My wait continued.

In November 2017, as the cold winter temperatures of Ladakh slowly started to take over the landscape, I was set to take a guest of ours, Dr.Srinivasan, a wildscapes photographer from Chennai, in search of a unique target. He wanted to capture the rising full moon with some wildlife in the frame. I had seen such images of his and a few others from Africa and other parts of the world. All my brain squeezing and asking around left me with one option, the Kala Tal Tal plateau near Hanley, the place where I had encountered Tibetan gazelle and Kiang a few months back.

After his initial few days of acclimatisation, we (along with our driver Stanzin again and Abhishek Gulshan, a birder and friend of mine from Delhi) decided to drive towards Hanley using the route from Pangong Lake. We stopped to spend the night at the banks of the large water body to photograph the growing moon rise from behind the mountains lining the lake. The next day we drove to Hanley via Mann, Merak, Chushul, Saga, Loma and Rango. The drive was only 160 km long but took us close to 8 hours thanks to a combination of bad roads and numerous photo ops thanks to the changing landscapes, the large pashmina goat herds with their Chang Pa herders, rare bird encounters like the merlin, red-throated pipit, sandgrouse, saker falcon and the numerous Kiang and Bharal herds that stood out in the barren slopes and rocky cliffs of Changthang’s cold desert.

On reaching Hanley, our host Sonam Dorjay and Padma told me something that caught me totally by surprise. ‘Ribilik is baar mil jayega’ ( ‘You will see the Pallas’s cat this time’). They said this even before the customary ‘Julley’ or hello. As I was trying my best to comprehend the full depth of those words, Sonam was already telling me of the various encounters by him and his friends in Hanley in the past week and top of all that, showed me brilliant images that he had taken just the previous day. The cat had apparently taken residence in a particular rocky outcrop that rose above the marshes at Hanley. All the week’s sightings had been in and around this magic spot and nowhere else. At the end of all this, as is always the case, he said ‘Shayad apko thode dhin pehle aana tha’ (‘ I wish you were here earlier’). I chose to ignore that statement and went about trying to push aside the excitement to force myself to sleep.

The next morning we were up early, chasing the setting moon around the marshes of Hanley. As we were driving around, our vehicle headlights caught a glimpse of a furry animal walking on a mound. It was there for a second and disappeared. I was convinced that this was the animal I had waited so long for but was told otherwise by the others in the vehicle who thought it was a fox. Maybe my excitement was getting the better of me.

After the moon finally set ( it took longer than I wanted it to), we decided to pay a visit to the magic rock and spent the next half hour scanning every single crack and crevice. As expected by others and naturally to my horror, there was no cat around. Just a few dogs that had cornered a red fox on top of the rocks and an upland buzzard that couldn’t be less bothered by all the drama that was unfolding in front of it. All the bird wanted to find was the head of a vole rising from one of the many burrows that dotted the marsh. We decided to move on to the Kala Tal Tal plateau to recce the place for the moon shot. Our guest found the flat short-grass lined top of the plateau perfect for his particular quest. The presence of numerous Kiang and Tibetan gazelle (49 was our count – the highest I had seen) made finding subjects for his shot possible in the limited time window provided by the rising moon.

That evening went perfectly well, our guest, Dr.Srinivasan had done all the research on moon rise timings by date and all we had to do was wait in the right spot. The rising moon rose from behind the eastern end of the plateau in a way we had never seen before and right there in front of the rising white ball, stood a few gazelles. I couldn’t resist clicking a few images myself. It was quite easily the best set of photograph I had ever clicked in all my years in the wilderness. We decided to return to our hosts at camp at the end of our successful first day (Ill call it that despite the Pallas’s Cat no show). As a bonus, we even came across a hunting Short-eared Owl on the way up.

Honestly, the sight created by the rising moon and the gazelles would be very hard to beat.

The next morning, our last full day at Hanley, I decided to skip the morning moon chase. Abhishek and I decided to walk towards the magic rocky outcrop, the home of our Ribilik, leaving Stanzin to take care of our guest. It was a good long walk that started in the dark, made longer by our frequent stops to scan the marshes for movement of fur balls in the twilight. We finally did approach the rock and after ten minutes of scanning with our binoculars it was pretty clear that the cat wasn’t going to show. We decided to give it another try and walked a wide loop around the marshes to the other side of the big brown mass of earth. This side had a few smaller caves that I had remembered from my previous visits to the place. We started scanning these holes amongst other cracks and dark abysses. In one of them was a white shape that looked odd. The low light didn’t give much away. I boosted the ISO on my camera and clicked a few shots hoping to get a better picture (literally) of the scene in front of me. I zoomed in on the first picture and there, staring back at me from one of the holes was the white shape. But now I could see that it had two eyes, a mouth, whiskers and dark streaks on the cheeks. It was my cat, the Ribilik, the Pallas’s Cat. I almost shouted out to Abhishek in excitement but thankfully the cold got the better of me.

We spent the next thirty minutes watching the cat from a distance. After the initial few minutes the cat decided to leave the cave and walk to the top of the rock to take in the warmth of the morning sun. No number of images or videos that I had seen in the past could’ve prepared me for the rest of the cat (all I had seen till that moment was the head). It was just a small ball of greyish brown fur that seemed to move in the most amazing manner. Firstly, there were no legs to be seen as the long fur touched the ground on either side and secondly, and most amazingly, the cat walked with a pace that was best defined by zero. We knew it was moving but it surely didn’t move like any of the cats I had seen before. It was slow, and smooth, with no legs visible, almost like a fat millipede. Finally after the longest stretch of time, the Ribilik reached the top of the rock, showing itself in full form with the rising sun lighting up its fur. It was a sight to behold. We clicked very few images as we knew no photograph can do justice to what was unfolding in front of us.

Through the rest of the day, the cat popped in and out of its den, giving us multiple views of itself sunning and preening itself in the open, all the while staring out into the vastness of his/her kingdom from his rocky throne. The horned larks were the only living things around that seemed to hate the presence of the cat and became agitated every time the cat showed itself in the open and sometimes even dived close its head to irritate it (i presume).

We were also joined by ace filmmaker Sandesh Kadur, who had also come to the area to try his luck with this elusive cat of the transhimalaya. He definitely did get some fantastic footage of the cat through the various sightings of day. We observed little behaviour, except when the cat walked to a particular spot to deposit its scat. Sandesh told us that this behaviour of the Ribilik was almost like that of a rhino’s midden. He also gave us further insights and information into the life of the Ribilik that he had learnt from his past encounters and through his friends working in the Mongolian steppe.

My dream (one of them atleast) was finally complete. I later learned from the data at the Snow Leopard Conservancy that these cats had been recorded in multiple locations around Ladakh and were always found to occur around marshes or lakes above a particular altitude. There was such limited data available on these cats within Indian limits. Most of the scientific study data seemed to be coming in from the central Asian steppe of Mongolia. The camera trap records and other habitat data collected by the Snow Leopard Conservancy, coupled with the interest shown by locals like Sonam Dorjay of Hanley is the start that will eventually lead towards the complete understanding and conservation of the Ribilik of the Transhimalaya.