Leopard Country

Jawai, Rajasthan · 25 and 26 March 2025

Jawai has no forest. It is granite — bare domes of rock rising out of farmland in southern Rajasthan — and leopards live in the caves of those hills, above villages and temples, in plain sight of the people below.

You wait at the foot of a hill at dusk and at dawn and watch the rock. On the first evening a leopard came out of a cave mouth as the jeeps lined the ridge above it. The next morning one stood in the open on the granite, and that evening an owl took the skyline instead.