Hi. I've been tracking snow leopards!
A snow leopard is like a giant white cat. It's smaller than a tiger though. (Perhaps you can find a picture on Google images.) It's very rare, but there are more snow leopards in Dolpo, where I went trekking, than in most other places.
I saw this footprint and thought it might be a snow leopard. It's definitely not a goat or a yak or a person or even a stuffed traveller, so what else could it be? There aren't many other animals in Dolpo.
I saw lots of other footprints too, like these ones:
In fact, I followed the footprints all the way to our campsite!
Grace, Robin and Adam might think this is a bit funny but one of the best ways of identifying an animal is to look at its poo. Cats leave 'scat' (long thin poo). Horses and donkeys leave big round droppings. Goats leave smaller round droppings. And I think you know what human poo looks like!
We saw some long thin poo - a bit like a cat's poo but much bigger - so we thought it might have come from a snow leopard.
Unfortunately we didn't see the leopard but it would have been very exciting if we had! We asked some local people and they said they had seen the leopard recently.
We heard some other big, scary wildlife nearby though. When we were getting ready for bed we heard some wolves howling in the mountains. It was very frightening. They howled again in the night and then we heard them coming through our campsite. I was desperately hoping that wolves don't like to eat stuffed travellers!
The wolves must have found a small yak or a goat to eat, because they soon went away. I was very happy when we woke up the next morning and everybody was still safe and I couldn't hear the wolves howling anymore!
I wonder what is the scariest animal that Robin, Grace and Adam have ever met?
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