The Ghost of the MountainsKulbhushansingh SuryawanshiGranta Books (UK); Riverhead Books (US) Like many large carnivores, the snow leopard is eclipsed by an outsize reputation, which makes it almost impossible to separate the animal from the story. The solitary, largely silent cat is often spoken of as being not there – a shadow, a ghost – with its ethereal presence, in the Buddhist heartlands of the Himalaya, bordering on the spiritual. When Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi first proposed studying the cat, his professor dismissed the idea, because, he said, his student would never see one.
Yet two decades on (and a handful of sightings later), Suryawanshi has produced a wonderful book, The Ghost of the Mountains, about this most unknowable of animals. During the Pleistocene ice age, the snow leopard’s distribution probably stretched from Portugal to Siberia. But their range contracted with the ice, and they are now confined to 12 countries in Central Asia and the Himalaya, across some of the world’s highest mountain ranges.
Unlike wolves, say, or lynxes, they are the only large carnivores to be exclusively adapted to mountains. Their dusky coats, spotted with dark rosettes, vanish against boulders and scree. Relative to their body size, their tails are longer than that of any other cat, helping them balance, while wide nostrils warm the air they breathe.
Genetic adaptations let them cope with the thin air. The leopard becomes his way of penetrating the complexity and fragility of all we stand to lose Suryawanshi is equally well equipped to study them, combining profound patience, a lifetime of mountaineering and a deep passion for this enigmatic animal. This is just as well: it is hard to imagine a more punishing environment for fieldwork.
The snow leopard inhabits 3 million square kilometres of mountains. The peaks soar to over 8000 metres and the weather can turn on a dime. His teams must deal with hypothermia, blizzards, bears and rivers in spate.
One friend dies of a heart attack, a complication of altitude sickness. Another, who worked to protect the mountains from mining, is found dead, his death unexplained. Until Suryawanshi began his work, less than 1 per cent of the snow leopard’s habitat had been properly surveyed.
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