I Went Looking for a Leopard's Memorial
A mini-adventure journal from my Himalayan diaries
In the autumn of 2012, I moved to Roorkee, a small town in the state of Uttarakhand in India, to pursue my master’s at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. Although rare at the time, on one of my weekend trips to Rishikesh (Yoga Capital of the World), I came across a book about a man-eating leopard authored by Jim Corbett in a small riverside cafe. The order took so much time to arrive that I read almost 30 pages of the book before whatever it was that I ordered was served on the table. I returned home with an unnatural urge and eagerness to know what happened in the story beyond those 30-odd pages that I read of the book.
For a 21-year-old, young imbecile mind trapped in the evil clutches of instant gratification presented by the online world, patience was not the first virtuous trait I liked to associate myself with. Purchasing the book online and waiting for a week or more, tracking it obsessively until it arrived, was out of the question. I sat down, fired up my computer and began scouring the internet well beyond the third page of Google’s search results. For those of you who have never been there, it is the darkest place on the internet, where only a few of us have ventured when hit by a wave of desperation, determination, courage, and hopeless optimism. A mix of such noble qualities conferred me with a poorly scanned copy of the book, which I happily downloaded and read.
In the late 1920s, a leopard in the Himalayan town of Rudrapryag in India turned into a man-eater. The leopard’s kill orders were so authoritative that nobody from the town would dare to move alone in the night on the roads that connected the shrines of Badrinath and Kedarnath, which lay in the heart of the leopard’s territory. Corbett, the most celebrated hunter known for killing many man-eaters in colonial India, admitted to having spent the longest time in his career (~ six months) hunting this man-eater.
“ No curfew order has ever been so strictly enforced, and more implicitly obeyed, than the curfew imposed by the man-eating leopard of Rudraprayag.” - The Man Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag
Corbett describes this leopard as an intelligent, exceptionally cunning, and supremely courageous animal. The fact that it outplayed almost everyone who went behind it, including Corbett, by no means is an exaggeration of its shrewd personality. At times, to get into the people’s homes in the middle of the night, the hungry cat reportedly dug through the mud and thatch walls of the huts, broke open the latch of the doors, killed and walked away with its prey without waking anyone in the house from their sleep. It should not be surprising to know that India's erstwhile colonial British government announced a huge bounty on the man-eater’s head. Sportsmen, sometimes a team of trained and experienced men, were brought in to eliminate this man-eater.
The news of this leopard’s notorious exploits travelled globally to be published from Australia to Canada. It went on a gruesome rampage with ~125 recorded human kills (~400 unrecorded) over eight long years that it was active in the jungles of the Garhwal Himalayas near Rudraprayag. Gripping accounts of Corbett’s hunts are available in his book, “The Man-Eating Leopard of Rudraprayag.”
On its fateful night, Corbett shot down the leopard in a village named Gulabrai a few miles from Rudraprayag, ending its eight-year reign of absolute terror over the people of the Garhwal region. A few years later, I stumbled upon a piece of information on the web which hinted to me about a memorial that was built for the leopard near Rudraprayag, where it was shot dead by Corbett. I decided to visit it. In 2017, I rented a bike in Rishikesh and searched for the leopard’s memorial riding on the Himalayan roads.
Here is how to find the leopard’s memorial in Gulabrai near Rudraprayag:
Drive along the highway towards Badrinath. As you approach Rudraprayag, the road splits into two. One to the left, heading towards a bridge that runs over the river Alakananda, and the other straight up towards a small hill. Drive straight onto the hill.
Under the shade of high-grown trees, Gulabrai is a small and quiet human settlement in Garhwal Himalayas. About ~ 0.5 km into the village, you will pass a Regional Transport Office to your right. Say hello to the officer only after you have ensured that the vehicle’s papers are in order and you are licensed to drive. If not, with a straight face, drive a few yards ahead. To your left, look for a mango tree overlooking a small enclosure from afar, sparsed with benches and a memorial painted in white at the compound's near end. Get in there. The mango tree, if it still exists, was supposedly used by Corbett to sit and wait before he shot the leopard.
The scene at the memorial after it was ravished by a storm the previous day. As you sit there and reconstruct the events of the night the leopard was shot, the extent of thrill that you may experience can only get as good as your imagination can take you.
I spent about an hour clicking pictures and munched on a few biscuits for lunch. Before returning to Rishikesh, I asked a good village resident for a bottle of water. As his young daughter quickly disappeared into the home with my water bottle, he asked me why I had come to Gulabrai. When I explained him the reason for my visit to this unusual place, he was delighted and invited me for a cup of hot chai (tea).
If you enjoy first-person accounts of adventures in the wild, suspense and intricacies of still hunting, this book and other works by Jim Corbett and Kenneth Anderson are my recommendations. May you get an opportunity to visit this humble place in the heart of the Himalayas in your lifetime.
The most interesting information I gathered from my conversation with the man was about a fair that is reportedly held yearly in Gulabrai to commemorate the leopard's death. As I could not verify its authenticity, I suggest you confirm from other sources about the fair before you plan to visit the memorial on May 26; the day the leopard was shot dead.
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Only a voracious reader like you can describe it so well. Keep traveling and sharing. Bless You.
Love this!!! You’re such a great story teller, Gautham. I’m inspired and excited by your historical accounts and your adventure.