THE HIMALAYAN SNOW LEOPARD
“ Last night, the snow leopard left tracks just outside the monastery, on the Saldang path that I shall take tomorrow; like the scrape found yesterday over my bootprint, it is hard not to read this as a sign. Then the cat recrossed the Black River – either that, or there are two leopards in the region, as we think. Followed or preceded by a solitary wolf – perhaps the same elusive beast that circled the prayer wall here last week – this leopard or another has prowled the Tsakang trail, and on my last day here, as the sun rises from the ice horizon, we climb the westward slopes in hopes of locating a kill.”
“Have you seen the snow leopard? No! Isn’t that wonderful?”
― from the book “The Snow Leopard – by Peter Matthiessen.
There is no other great document than this excellent book where Peter Matthiessen (then a student of Zen Buddhism), journeyed (in 1973) with the great field biologist, Dr. George Schaller to a remote part of the Nepal Himalayas in search of this elusive wonder of the Himalayas – The Snow Leopard.
