JHALANA

Jhalana is quite an interesting little forest. It is a 20 sq km forest in the middle of Jaipur and not many people know, but the forest is home to approx. 40 leopards…. and spotting this elusive cat is not an uphill task. In early 2022, after having spent two years locked up in our homes and with the worst of COVID behind us, we decided to drive out of Delhi for a quick one day safari to Jhalana. The plan was simple. Drive to Jaipur in the morning and check in by eleven. Have a quick bite and then head straight to Jhalana. The next morning, we would go for another safari and then drive back to Delhi. A quick one-night break from being locked up … and that is exactly what we did!

The drive from Delhi to Jaipur was not too bad (approx.. 170kms) and even though the farmers protest had blocked most of the border crossing, the drive was smooth. The only bad patch was the Haryana – Rajasthan border, but once we crossed it, the rest of the drive was non eventful. We reached the Ramada Hotel well in time and after a plate of laal maas and a few butter naans later, we headed to Jhalana Leopard Park.

Jhalana Leopard Reserve is a mix of different habitats. The most visible feature of the park is its scrubland… but once you start driving inside the park, you notice the landscape is constantly changing. From the narrow valleys of the Aravallis and sharp cliffs of hills dominate the landscape of the Jhalana forest is dominated by plants like juliflora and khejri. The topography of the reserve is a mix of low hills, watering holes, open grasslands and surprisingly in one pocket you drive into thick forest. And all this within the parks 20kms boundary.

Apart from the Leopard, other big cats of include Indian civets, desert cats, and jungle cats. If you are lucky, you can spot other animals like Striped Hyena, desert foxes, jackals, porcupinesand monitor lizards. However, spotting animals like the Langur, Sambar and spotted deer or the Blue Bull (Nilgai) should not be an uphill task.

Our first ride into the park was a little disappointing. We expected to see a leopard…. In fact, we expected to see many leopards. Sadly, the only leopard we saw was at six in the evening and honestly, what we saw a basically a shadow. However, in our two hour safari drive, we saw the usual langurs, sambar and spotted deers, and a number of Blue Bulls.

From a birding point of view, we saw a Jungle nightjar, (probably the only nightjar in Jhalana as everyone only seemed to know of this one in this exact location), a serious number of Grey Francolins and the usual Indian Peafowls, Greater Coucal, Rufous Treepies, Scaly-breasted Munia (Spotted Munia) and the Black Drongos. We didn’t see any Owls, but spotted a Bonelli's Eagle (too far to take a picture), a Short-toed Snake-Eagle and an Egyptian Vulture. Our next safari was more fun because of two reasons. The weather was a lot cooler and we spotted two leopards.

Overall, I would give Jhalana Leopard Reserve a 7/10, but as we did not have our fill of looking at the big cat, we will visit the park again. Maybe this time, we can tell our guide to drive around the park slowly, so that we can enjoy what the park has to offer, instead of zipping up and down the dirt tracks looking for the leopard.