Ansai Township in Zaduo County includes three villages, Reiqing village, Niandu village and Surao village. Surao village is nearly 100 kilometers away from the township and Zaduo county, and there are not as many visitors as the other two villages. Surao village is one of my favorite snow leopard watching places, where I photographed the WPY (Wildlife Photographer of the year) award-winning work "eye to eye", and later photographed the death of that snow leopard.

        The mountains here are steep and magnificent. Snow leopards often appear near the roadside

        There is an ancient Niandu Temple (Niandu temple is in Surao village!). Snow leopards frequently appear on the nearby rocky mountain. It is my dream to take a picture of the snow leopard with Niandu temple as the background.

        Every time I come to Surao village; I stay in the house of Caigai who is a very good snow leopard guide. His house is at the intersection of three valleys. It is surrounded by the habitat of snow leopards. There are often snow leopards on the mountain behind his house. Sometimes they are very close. It is easy to hear the cry of snow leopards in spring.

        The local government has provided container houses for herdsmen's families which accept guests of nature watching program. The accommodation conditions of guests have been improved a lot.

        The picture below shows a snow leopard photographed by Caigai behind his house.

        Only an hour's drive from Caigai’s house, , there is a secret valley. In summer, there are several herdsmen families, but there is no one in winter. Before we first explored here, even Caigai did not go into it. The wild animals here are very active. On December 28, 2019, Caigai, Zeng Chang (I think he is the best Han nationality snow leopard Guide in China) and me saw the hunting sites of wolves and snow leopards five times in just 12 hours

        The first site: A little yak was killed by a wolf by the river in the night. After dawn, the wolf left. The vultures and magpies were robbing the last part of corpse. The Yak's parents stood in the glacier and refused to leave. 

        The second site: A blue sheep was chased by a wolf into the river and killed

        The third site: Another blue sheep was chased down the hillside by wolf and stopped by a barbed wire fence

        The fourth site: A group of vultures was eating a  animal body under an huge rock. Caigai climbed up to see that it was a dead blue sheep. It should have been killed by the snow leopard a few days ago. We passed here yesterday and didn't find it. Today, the snow leopard finished eating and left. We missed a good opportunity.

        The fifth site: in the depths of the valley, at the end of the road, at noon, we spotted a snow leopard who was eating a blue sheep with big horn. He is an old snow leopard; his face is full of battle scars. His right face was swollen and the right eye was injured. He moved away as we came. Magpies descended to peck at the soft bits of the sheep- the eyes and open wounds. I moved in quickly go setup a hide and wait, within one hour, the leopard returned to feed again. He kept looking into the lens from his meal, eventually, dragged the food behind a big rock. 

        The next day we saw him again. It was difficult to find him in the rock hole in the shadow on the right middle of the picture

        Zoom in a little

        Zoom further to see him:

        Caigai's eyesight is very good, and he works very hard to find the snow leopard. As long as there is a sign, he climbs up to check. It's common for him to climb up a vertical height of hundreds of meters.

        Four months later, we came to the same part of the valley again. The bearded vulture was flying in the sky. The himalayan vultures stopped on the rocks. Caigai said there must be a snow leopard. He crossed the river to check. He came back and said that there was a snow leopard a dead one. I approached and looked closely. It was the old snow leopard we met four months ago. His body was incomplete and a little miserable. Nature is fair to every life. All life are equal in the nature. Yesterday he was the king of snow mountains, and today he become the food of scavengers.

        What was the cause of his death? The scene we saw a few hours later may be the answer: a pair of snow leopards roared on the hillside 100 meters away. The fight for mating rights may be the cause of the death of the old snow leopard.

        "Eye to eye" won Highly Commended in 2021 Wildlife Photographer of the Year (WPY). Which was founded by the BBC 57 years ago.is the most prestigious, largest and longest-running photographic event of its kind.

Caigai and me

Zengzhang is searching

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