A Few Beauty Spots

If you want to see leopards in Rajasthan, go to Jawai, where sightings are plentiful and the rooms cosy at Cheetahgarh 

- Mitali Saran

The landscape is, of course, stunning— hills, thorn, sand, bursts of green, and a monsoon sunset pouring glory over all of it—but it’s the rock that makes it so special. The desert scrub is littered with massive slabs of granite, vomited up by volcanoes and shaped by hundreds of millions of years of wind—scalloped, frozen into overhangs like cobra hoods, serrated into patterns, and nudged into arrangements full of cracks and caves that are just perfect for a leopard looking for shade and a little privacy. 

One such 1.5 million-year-old, 12-tonne rock stands at the gate of my hotel; it took a month to chisel the words ‘Cheetahgarh Resort & Spa, Bera—A WelcomHeritage Resort’ on its face. Bera is one of several villages around the dam on the Jawai River, and the Jawai region is synonymous with leopards—an estimated 50 or 60 in the Bera area. My chances of seeing one are apparently 95-100 per cent. That high, for this shyest of cats? It’s hard to believe. Wildlife safaris are largely about patience and luck, and avoiding disappointment by not setting your heart on one particular thing.