"In the ancient hills of Jawai in northwest India, locals and big cats have peacefully coexisted for centuries like nowhere else in the world. Jawai, in the Pali district of Western Rajasthan, is a remarkable place. In a country that has been changed almost beyond recognition by two decades of explosive economic growth, electrification here is patchy, the crops of mustard and wheat painstakingly harvested by hand.

 

In 1946, Maharajah Umaid Singh of Jodhpur broke ground on a dam on the river Jawai, the most significant incursion of modernity into the landscape. The land around the dam is known informally by the river’s name.

 

The rich river-bottom soil, which for millennia has supported clans of Rajput farmers, is broken by dramatic solitary hills, stark uninhabited granite peaks, almost all of which are marked by a shrine or temple. 

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Through this country wander semi-nomadic herders of the Rabari tribe following ancient routes that take them south into [the state of ] Gujarat and east into [the state of] Madhya Pradesh. And in the hills live dozens of leopards, predators who by day watch the humans go about their business, and by night come down to hunt, stalking the streets of their villages and killing their livestock."
 

(From Kunzru, Hari. "Life Among the Leopards." The New York Times, 08 May 2015).