HIGHER POWER

On a journey through the foothills of the Himalayas, where humans live alongside one of the world’s most elusive creatures, Maggie Shipstead discovers the good that grassroots conservation can do.

- Maggie Shipstead

What are we to make of elusiveness in an animal? If a creature is difficult for humans to see in the wild, is that nature’s way of hanging a “Do not disturb” sign? When the animal lives in a fragile ecosystem imperiled by human activity, what are the ethics of going there, even when tourism might drive conservation? As I looked out over the Himalayas on my flight into Leh, I found myself picking at these questions. I was on my way to join an expedition that had as its goal the sighting of an animal whose elusiveness has become its epithet. There is the brave lion, the sly fox, and the elusive snow leopard.

Beside me napped a young Buddhist monk in burgundy robes and a red, flat-brimmed baseball cap that said “DOPE” across the front. Below, toothy black peaks cut through undulating snowfields, the mountains so gigantic that their summits seemed to skim just under the plane’s belly. Fifteen years ago, the summer after college graduation, a friend and I took a bus over 956km from Delhi to Leh. After three precarious days of hairpin turns, rockslides, and passes topping 17,000ft, we arrived deep in a star-strewn night and woke in a green oasis spread across the floor of a broad, austere valley. Shimmering poplar trees and fluttering prayer flags ringed our guesthouse. Ancient monasteries perched on rocky outcroppings above the Indus River. It was a place I wanted to return to before I had even left it.