Guiding us on a small off road track, starting at Bara Pani, Kucho Raza led our Land Rover deep into the Deosai plains where there was a lone watch tower built by the park authorities. Raza spent fifteen minutes trying to spot a bear through his trusted binos, continually guaranteeing us that we will see it today.
“Wo hai … Wo hai …” he called to us excitedly.
It took him a lot of frustration to make me spot the small dot on the hill side a few miles away.
I could only guess it was something alive after I realised it was moving. Ever so slowly as it was grazing and moving intermittently
“Chalain sir. ” He was a good ten meters away from me already when I looked up. Realising he wanted to take me closer to the beast I started following him.
Soon, though, I was breathless. During the many short breaks he would tell me about the wild plants and stories from his past adventures.
After a forty minute hike he looked back at a totally exhausted me. Stuck between losing the bear and losing me, he asked me to sit for a while on the soft grass. He took out a small tuber from the ground and washed it in the stream next to us.
“This is a wild onion plant. Eat it. It gives good energy.” I ate half of it after he had it too. Energised or not, we were back on the chase now we could not see the bear as it was behind a small hill. I climbed up the hill while Raza waited for me on top but my hopes faded when I saw there was another hill that we had to cross.
After another 30 minutes or so I found Raza pulling me up the last hill . He left my hand for a moment and ran up and then back, excited. “Come quickly, its right there”
Now we were ducking down and nearly crawling on all fours. Raza checked the wind direction with a few small petals he tore off a flower and said “Good. Direction is towards the left. Not towards the bear.”
He explained that the bear has poor eyesight and relies on smell. If the direction of air was towards the bear he would smell us and run away.
We carefully crawled up behind a large rock at the top and then sneaked to the side of it to have a look. To my astonishment, the small dot we saw from far away was actually a large magnificent beast only about 200 feet from us now. A sudden rush of adrenaline shot through my spine. The large creme coloured head with cute fluffy rounded ears and an innocent expression to the face. Its brown fur on the body like the beast had just dried itself with a towel after taking a bath. Grazing calmly along the yellow-green hues of the plane on its stocky legs. It was truly a sight to behold.
We watched it for a good five minutes while I took photos. I wanted to get closer now to get better images so we crawled closer slowly but the bear got suspicious. He was looking towards us but couldn’t make out if there was something there. Soon it started moving towards the left and that is when I realized Kuchu Raza knew his bears. The bear took a good fifteen minutes moving in a wide arc towards until the breeze could take our scent to him.
It stared at us for a moment and growled a bit in a low tone. We stayed still but it had caught our scent. Soon it stood up on its hind legs for a moment, as if to confirm the sighting of the rare humans, then it pounced back and started running away from us. We watched it disappear behind another small hill.
“Do you want to follow?” Asked Raza. I could only smile back and he understood. I was speechless. I would be in awe for quite a few days to come.
He took my camera from me and we started our long walk back.
