Leopards and people at Jawai

The remarkable thing about Jawai is not that there are leopards. It is that they live on hills with villages on them, and everybody has arranged themselves around that fact without much fuss.

The landscape first

Granite. Smooth grey outcrops rising straight out of farmland, nothing like the desert people expect from Rajasthan. The reservoir at the middle of it was built under Maharaja Umaid Singh of Jodhpur, and it holds the whole place together — the water brings birds, the birds bring people who care about them, and the rocks hold the leopards.

How the arrangement works

The leopards use the caves and ledges on the outcrops. Herders graze below. This has held for generations, and the people who live here regard it as unremarkable in a way that visitors find hard to believe. Ask, and you will get a shrug and a story.

Seeing one, and not seeing one

Dawn and dusk are when they move, and a morning without a sighting is still a good morning — the light on that rock is worth being out for on its own. Anybody who promises you a leopard is selling something. Go for the landscape and treat a sighting as the bonus it is.

Bring binoculars

Even if leopards are the reason you came. The water draws an extraordinary quantity of birdlife through the cooler months, and it is the thing guests most often say they wish they had been ready for.

The evenings

There is nothing to do, and that is the point. A terrace, the hills going dark, a pot of tea, then a table under lit trees. People arrive intending to stay one night and rearrange things.

Jawai Riva is a small tented camp near the dam. More on staying in Jawai.