I grew up in Kumdok, a small village of 17 homes in the interior of Ladakh, a place of mountains and blue skies. When I was young, all of the families in my village reared livestock. Each family had goats, sheep, yak and cows. All of us, even children, herded the animals. We had to make sure we were with them as they grazed in the pastures around our village. I still remember that time when I first went to herd livestock for the village. It was the most thrilling and terrifying day of my life!
Since my parents were busy with other chores, they asked me and my eight-year-old brother Nurbu to go with our herd of 50 animals. I was six years older than my brother. We spent the day minding the animals, having tea and sattu (flour made from roasted barley), and chit-chatting constantly. The day passed smoothly, and we were feeling confident. This seemed easy, I thought.
Just as we were climbing down the mountain with our herd, Nurbu let out a shriek and pointed towards a huge, furry, grey animal that had caught a goat by her neck. Both of us froze. We did not know how to react. The creature we saw in front of us was a large-sized cat. Its paws were enormous, and we could see it flexing its muscles as it held the struggling goat in its jaws. It was a snow leopard, the phantom of the mountains, the most dangerous creature in Ladakh.
I trembled. I shook so hard that I could barely stand upright. Several tense minutes passed and all I could do was stare. Finally I took a deep breath and told myself that I was older than my brother and so needed to deal with the situation. I took Nurbu’s hand and whispered to him to be brave.
Both of us inched towards the snow leopard. Our parents had taught us what to do in case we face a wild animal. The first thing we did was scream loudly. Animals get startled by noise. To protect ourselves, Nurbu and I picked loose stones from the ground and hurled them in the snow leopard’s direction to scare it away. I took a stick and started beating the ground hard, making a ruckus. Startled by the noise, the snow leopard dropped the goat and growled at us menacingly. But, both of us together made so much noise that it made it impossible for the snow leopard to eat the goat in peace! So it moved away and climbed up into the mountains to look down at us. Seeing our chance, we ran towards the goat to check if she was still alive. She was not.
We were worried. We did not want to tell anyone in the village that there was a snow leopard in our valley. It was our first day as herders and we did not want to be held responsible for a missing goat!
“I hope it was not lactating,” I said. Nurbu nodded. We did not want anyone to find out that the goat was missing. If it was a female goat with a now-orphaned kid, the owner might notice. If not, then we would have little to worry about as the owner would most likely not notice the missing goat. I tried to milk the goat and was relieved to find that she was not lactating. Small mercies.
Excerpted with permission from Our Encounter with a Snow Leopard written by Lobzang Le and illustrated by Tanushree Roy Paul, published By Nature Conservation Foundation. You can read the entire story on Storyweaver.
About the contributors
Lobzang Le
