“We learned that the mother had made a yak kill on the other side of the mountain,” Indian adventurer Ekta Marda told The Epoch Times. “So we decided to pitch a tent and try to track its movements.”
The 36-year-old photographer from Mumbai was on the scout for an elusive mountain predator, known regionally as the “ghost cat” or more commonly as the snow leopard.
It was March in 2018, and Ekta and her team had been waiting for the beautiful feline to appear for those three days while she tended her meal. “Every day, we would hike for five to seven kilometers back and forth in the snow,“ she said. ”And finally on the fourth day, the mother leopard came out of its hiding through the mountain crevices when I was fortunate enough to capture her.”
The watch yielded a few photos of the mysterious animal, including this picture featuring a well-camouflaged ghost cat on a rocky cliff face. Can you spot her?
“Snow leopard spotting is one of the most difficult tasks,” Ekta said. “But we were fortunate to have a very experienced team of trackers working with us, who made us learn about the land and made her spotting so much easier.”
Her photos were taken in Spiti Valley, located in the northernmost point of India, in the Himalayas. Here, the harsh weather poses many challenges for would-be photographers. Snapping pictures in the biting cold with her Canon 1DX Mark II and 600 mm lens wearing winter gear is cumbersome, said Ekta. While higher altitudes and lower oxygen levels make one conscious of conserving one’s energy over the course of a day.
But it was all worth it in the end.
“People were thrilled to see the photo,” Ekta said of the female leopard shot. “I’ve been overwhelmed by responses from people who ask stories of my experiences in Spiti.”
The wildlife photographer had planned a return to the valley in early 2022.
