An Unbelievable Encounter in Bhutan

Nature, inherently is quite unpredictable. She has her own way of doing things, on her own timeline. She doesn’t have to worry about the fact that you have traveled far to watch a particular animal to appear at a particular moment, that you have been waiting for hours for a particular natural phenomena to occur or that you have been doing the waiting for a few days in a row. If things have to happen, they happen, else not. It is that plain and simple.

However, in all her unpredictability, Nature has those sprinkled, elements of surprises that bring us immeasurable amount of joy.

The below story is about one such moment in time.

We were in Bhutan on a bird photography trip, this past December of 2025. We had covered the wonderful locations of Thimphu, Punakha, Glephu and Tingtibi. Our next stop was Bumthang which was to be a long drive from Tingtibi, close to 5 hours, give or take.

After a great morning session of birding in Tingtibi, we were all tired. We would have dozed away but the roads kept us up. Long, winding and completely broken up roads (landslide prone areas) and on top of that road construction work was underway (inevitable though, monsoon here can be quite relentless and merciless).

(SideNote: Tingitibi is a magnificent birding location with amazing diverisity, a must visit. More on that in a later post perhaps)

Just as we finished passing all the open cliffs and the valleys and entered a wooded patch, our guide, the inimitable Phub Dorji, suddenly stopped the vehicle. To our left and pretty close was sitting a beautiful Owl, the Asian barred owlet.

This one was quite a bold individual and wasn’t fazed by our presence one bit. It was mid day by then and the light had become quite harsh. But we still managed some decent shots and moved on.

The talk about where to stop for lunch was starting up. We went past a small settlment and suddenly we noticed something moving by the side of the road, to our left. Whatever that animal was, seemed like it had just crossed the road from the other side.

I jumped up saying that it looked like a cat. As our vehicle was coming to a stop, I quickly picked up my camera and tried to capture a few shots through the windshield. Hardly any luck there, with the vehicle movement and having to focus through the thick windshield.

Though blurry, the images revealed what we had just seen. It was a Leopard Cat !!

I just couldn’t believe it. A Leopard cat!, in Bhutan and that too in the middle of the day!! OMG! That was just mindboggling!

The cat quickly scurried away into the bushes. As has been my experience with cats in general and these lesser cats in particular, they just don’t give too much time. I had resigned to the fact that, that was all the chance we would get with this leopard cat.

Just as we started moving, a tiny movement in the bushes caught my eye. It was the Leopard cat. Seemed like it had not gone too far. We turned our vehicle off and waited.

A shortwhile of wait and the cat cautiously comes out. The curious cat that it was, it moved around a bit and stood there watching us.

By then, I had very slowly and as sliently as possible opened the huge sliding door of our vehicle.

This leopard cat seemed to have something more important on its mind and chose not to mind us or in fact, completely ignore us. That was totally mad!

It was a lovely setting too, the cat surrounded by all the beautiful purple flowers.

The cat then moved away and ahead of our vehicle, all the while keeping close to the bushes. Thats when, very carefully and crouching, I got down from our vehicle and sat down on the road below. My friend Surya who was also with me, did the same too.

Here’s us, on the road 😃

Me, below, wondering whether all that was happening was for real ?? !! 😇

The leopard cat took its time and came out towards the road and enthralled us by posing for us, literally.

After a quick couple of pauses to look back at us, the Leopard cat finally decided that it was time to go and darted back like a lightning bolt into the thickets from whence it came.

That was a truly unbelievable encounter for me. Leopard cat giving so much time, posing for us and that too at mid-day. I was getting high purely from the complete surge of adrenaline in my body, flabbergasted to say the least!. Moments & memories that will be etched in all our minds for a long time to come.

Hope you enjoyed the post. Please do share your thoughts by dropping in a comment below.

See you on the next one.