Ramgarh Tales: A Leap Into the Wild

Ramgarh? Most people didn’t know where it was. They guessed somewhere near Ranchi where there was a district by that name with an ancient temple. For the longest time, I didn’t either, mixing it up with Ramnagar and Corbett National Park where I had gone tiger spotting after a monsoon. It was somewhere in the Kumaon range which meant it definitely has links with big cats. In fact, the friend who invited me to Ramgarh told me something about Jim Corbett and a leopard in the hope that this would tempt me to go there.

She said her house was in Talla Ramgarh, with a farm attached. There were two Ramgarhs: Talla and Malla. One was slightly higher than the other which was confusing. I gathered they were two hills, both in Uttarakhand, but agreed to the trip none the wiser. Corbett and Ramgarh did not come together in my scheme of things though that was to change once I got my bearings. Leopards, my friend said. That buzzed inside my head as the SUV jounced up the roads from Delhi, the starting point, and then with a sigh of relief into the green spaces and corkscrew roads. We passed a sign that said ‘Kaladhungi’–Corbett’s winter home and now a museum. My companions in the car found the sign as much of a mystery as Ramgarh. I was convinced that I had to find another explanation that would locate Ramgarh for people beyond Google Maps.

Then I caught sight of another sign that said ‘Kumaon’. Now, Kumaon was the world of man eaters where Corbett prowled the trails up and down from Mukteshwar to Rudraprayag—the others in the car had heard of the place though the man eater bit worried them a little. “Are there man eaters in Ramgarh? Is Ramgarh in Kumaon?”

As it turned out, Ramgarh was in the Kumaon hills and I had a locator that might solve the mystery for various people who wondered where I was going. “I am in Jim Corbett country,” I could tell them, though it was the monsoons—when sensible big cats made themselves scarce, or so I thought.

A leopard had slithered into my friend’s orchard one night and attacked her Indie, Toast.  It was lucky there were toothmarks around its neck but the leopard had been startled in the act and abandoned its prey. My friend was trying to get it to a vet. Another Indie, Butter, wasn’t so lucky—it had vanished without trace a month before the rains. The story was best not passed among my nervous companions in the group but they were warned not to go for leisurely post-dinner moonlit walks. Langurs were enough of a deterrent for them.

A drive to Mukteshwar corkscrewed up through ice-cream clouds and scarves of pine-scented mist though there were no signs of the man eater that made its name famous among Corbett fans. However, the story that defined Ramgarh for me was not about man eaters but most certainly about dogs–in this case, feral dogs, which was more dramatic perhaps. That one was told by a Kashmiri geographer who had been digging in the hills for minerals. It was  barren hillside that sloped to a 150-foot drop down a glacier. Since he was a geographer and the glacier was part of his research, he had noted the height as he worked, collecting sediment near the edge. He had his kitbag with him while working. Normally, a local would be with him at the camp he had set up, but there was a puja and everyone had gone to the village, leaving him to his own devices.

He heard a threatening snarl and looked up from his scrabbling among the sediment to find himself facing a ring of burning red eyes. They belonged to ferocious hill sheepdogs that had gone wild and were on the lookout for prey. Seven of them were circling him, a few in front of the pack, but not yet advancing to attack. He banged on the rock with his trowel and shouted. The dogs backed away, snarling even more.

As the dogs advanced and retreated and crouched, he pulled two Voveron capsules from his pack, swallowed them and rolled over the edge, sliding down the glacier and creating his own landslide. Miraculously, he survived to tell us the tale, though both his legs were broken and he had to crawl for a very long time before finding help. Perhaps he should have written down the story he told us that monsoon in the midst of dogs and leopards and hillscapes. 

(Anjana Basu is a Kolkata-based author and adverstising consultant. Her recent works include The House the Press Built and Translating for Rituparno)