ZECO TRAVEL TALK

Zegrahm director and expedition leader Jonathan Rossouw recently set out on a personal trip to Kyrgyzstan in search of the snow leopard, one of the most elusive and endangered animals on the face of the planet. Following is his account of the amazing adventure that unfolded:

It took us two full days of travel to reach Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan from Cape Town via Johannesburg, South Africa to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on to Almaty, Kazakhstan, and by road across the border into Kyrgyzstan (5hrs, including border crossing).

Spring was just beginning to arrive in Bishkek, with the first leaves appearing on the trees and the winter migrants such as black-throated thrush, long-tailed rosefinch, and hawfinch were still on their wintering grounds, mixing with the early spring arrivals of flocks of demoiselle cranes en route to the steppe.

Our trip was primarily a Snow Leopard Expedition and was arranged through a Danish contact we had met at the British Bird Fair, Michael Andersen, who claimed he had a spot with “probably the highest density of snow leopards on Earth”. Since Michael has seen more snow leopards than any other Westerner I know (by 3!), and to increase our chances, we arranged for him and a Kyrgyz hunter/tracker to scout the area through the winter, which they did, spending almost 2 months in the Tien Shan. By early March, he seemed confident that we would be searching in the best area for the elusive cat, with fresh evidence of the beast in the form of scat, scent markings, tracks, and the courtship calling that he heard one night in February.

We set out from Bishkek in high spirits, with our team comprising of five die-hard mammal enthusiasts: Malcolm Fair, an excellent birder with phenomenal spotting skills and two years experience in tracking leopards as head ranger at Singita in South Africa; my good friend, Adam Riley, with his enormous determination and lifetime of bird- and mammal-finding around the world; Matthew Matthiessen, exceptional wildlife photographer and cousin of Peter of The Snow Leopard fame; Giovanna Fasanelli, with her boundless enthusiasm and wildlife experience stemming from years of animal-spotting in the Kruger NP; and me. I had previously spent considerable effort looking for the animal in Bhutan, Nepal, and Mongolia, with the closest call being a set of tracks of a female and her cub (plus wet urine) crossing the dunes at the Singing Sands in the Gobi. I really, really wanted to settle the score.

Our first night was spent at a disused ibex hunters’ cabin at the mouth of the valley in the Tien Shan range about three hours east of Bishkek, with foliage of deciduous and coniferous (mainly Tien Shan fir and Juniper) forest supporting white-throated dippers, roding Eurasian woodcock, and yellow-breasted tit. On the following day, a long hike brought us to our first real mountain camp, above the tree line in a valley with good vantage across slopes and rocky outcrops grazed by Siberian ibex, the main quarry of the leopard. We carried day packs with scopes and camera gear, with all other camp gear hauled by porters and horses. No sign of leopards at this point but the weird calls of Himalayan snowcock echoed from the surrounding slopes. We also heard boreal owl vocalizing from the firs below camp.

The next morning we woke to tents buried under a foot and a half of snow… and zero visibility. During occasional breaks in the fog, we patiently scanned the surrounding cliffs. The highlight of the day was building a snow mermaid.

The following morning we woke to clear skies, struck camp and slogged up to the head of the valley, where we crossed a steep pass into the adjacent valley, “the very best site for the snow leopard.” A spectacular panorama of snowy Tien Shan, with glaciers spilling into the valley and steep, broken ridges favored by ibex and their main predator. Descending the pass on the other side, we met the Kyrgyz hunter, Nikolai, who reported seeing many ibex in the valley and, best of all, a snow leopard stalking them the previous day! We took the opportunity to bathe in the frigid stream at midday, which proved to be the only decent wash during our time in the mountains. The afternoon remained clear but no amount of scanning of the sheer slopes revealed anything other than the occasional band of ibex perched precariously on the precipices. That night the temperature plummeted below freezing, reaching ten below and we were extremely grateful for our thick down sleeping bags and thermal gear.

The next day began with another foot and a half of snow and zero visibility. We tried in vain to find a decent spot for scanning by hiking up and down the valley but the best we managed was swirling fog and more snow. The highlight of my day was winning three games of hearts in a row. In the evening, an ominous bank of clouds began swelling up the valley, bringing yet more snow overnight. The tents looked like igloos in the morning and the first respectable visibility occurred only around dusk. The highlight of that day was a lammergeier (bearded vulture) that patrolled the valley in the late afternoon light.

The following day began with a clear morning! The strategy was simple: find ibex, watch them, and hopefully find a snow leopard watching them too. We decided to head down the valley to an ibex salt lick that Nikolai suggested would be good for scanning. We boulder-hopped down the rugged ravine, into habitat that wasn’t anything like the snow leopard habitat I imagined: steep slopes of scree and dense fir forest. There were plenty of snow leopard tracks though and fresh scent markings. Bird sightings became more plentiful, with Eversmann’s, Guldenstadt’s and blue-capped redstarts, black-throated accentor, and the gorgeous white-browed tit-warbler. We spent hours watching ibex grazing across the slopes. Snow leopards obviously didn’t find them enticing enough. I tried to keep up the team’s spirits by reminding everyone that this cat only hunts once every two weeks, and sleeps for 20 out of 24 hours, and we were therefore due. No one really bought my logic.

On day eight we woke to MORE snow and no visibility. We decided to hike up the valley to prevent cabin fever, and miraculously the fog lifted and allowed excellent scanning of the slopes. Our pulses quickened when we located three very nervous ibex, all jumping up the cliffs and staring down at the same spot below them, but no amount of scanning revealed a leopard, or anything else, for that matter. Long-tailed marmots barked their warnings from the valley bottom, and red-mantled rosefinches enlivened the landscape. We felt like we were SO close.

Another clear day up the valley, and we were all beginning to squint from long hours spent glued to our scopes. We decided to approach the main cliffs, for more close scrutiny, only to have our main ibex group disappear over the ridge. Hmmm… We felt like our chances of seeing this damned cat were slipping away with them.

Malcolm needed to head down the valley to fly back to South Africa. Our original plan had been to see the leopard as quickly as possible (ha!), to leave us some time for birding in southern Kazakhstan, but in the first flush of enthusiasm this was modified to “stay in the valley until we find the cat”. Now grimy and dreaming of fresh fruit, the team decided to revive the original plan and hike out with Malcolm in order to spend the last four days on a whip-around of Almaty province.

The final four days were good from a birding point of view, with displaying McQueen’s bustards as a highlight and another ten odd life birds for me in the form of long-awaited Bruce’s scops owl, both white-crowned and black-headed penduline-tits, the three zelturanga poplar forest specialties (white-winged woodpecker, yellow-eyed stock dove, and Turkestan tit), and Persian nuthatch.

Looking back now, it was ultimately disappointing but nevertheless an incredible experience in a very beautiful place. I don’t know if it is justification, but it feels good to know that there are still creatures out there that are so elusive that sightings of them just can’t be guaranteed.

And that, naturally, motivates us to try to see them again some day…