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The Ghost of the Mountains by Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi

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The Ghost of the Mountains

Author
Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi
Narrator
Vidish Athavale
Publisher
Granta Books
Publish Date
13 August 2026
Run Time
10 hours 9 minutes
Format
Audiobook
Genre
Wildlife: mammals: general interest, Popular science

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What to expect

Silent, solitary and beautiful, snow leopards inhabit the rugged mountains of central Asia, so perfectly camouflaged by their silver-grey pelts that they vanish against the rocks and the cliffs. The biologist and scientist Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi (or Kullu, as he is widely known) has spent twenty years studying these elusive creatures in the wild, exploring their daily challenges, habitat, prey and population, and developing a profound understanding of their lives - with every snow leopard encounter bringing renewed meaning and purpose. Living for months at a time in some of the most remote places on earth, Kullu has pioneered new research that shines fresh light on these charismatic and vulnerable animals, showing how their fate is entangled with the local people and how their survival is central to preserving an austere, delicate ecosystem, increasingly under threat from development and intensifying climate change. Full of groundbreaking science and exhilarating storytelling, The Ghost of the Mountains offers a window into a majestic and endangered world, and gives an intimate view of the snow leopard's precarious existence.

Critics Review

  • Marvellous - quite literally. A thrilling story of adventure amongst high mountains, deep mysteries, elusive animals and vertiginous facts

    Charles Foster, author of The Edges of the World

  • A brave, unique field-study of the most extraordinary cat on the planet -- the Snow Leopard -- elusive, Spartan and beautiful

    Desmond Morris

  • Enchanting. The author is a most amiable guide on the mountainside, and this deeply informed book gave me hope for the future of conservation

    Sara Wheeler

  • Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi has spent his adult life studying, following and trying to protect snow leopards. The Ghost of the Mountains takes readers into the field, high in the Himalayas. The story it tells is by turns beautiful, terrible, and encouraging

    Elizabeth Kolbert

See more reviews
  • What a thrilling and intrepid story. Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi takes us into the icy heights of the Himalaya, tracking the elusive snow leopard and bringing to life both this solitary animal and the threatened world it inhabits. Beautifully told, it's a tale of beauty, drama and wild landscapes but also one of the entangled lives of snow leopards, their prey and the humans who share their terrain

    Andrea Wulf

  • The Ghost of the Mountains is a thrilling and engrossing adventure, written in passionate prose by one of the world's foremost conservationists of the snow leopard. Kulbhushansingh's deeply grounded praxis in the Himalayan landscape imbues his passages with a unique and strange power. Like the experienced mountaineer that he is, his writing too constantly straddles across the huge challenges of conservation, political complexity and community struggles in the mountains, and the haunting beauty of the snow leopard in its habitat. In that sense, for me, he surpasses Matthiessen

    Yuvan Aves

  • The narrative echoes with delight and wonder; Kullu's pursuit of knowledge about snow leopards blends with his recounting of pursuing glimpses of these wondrous creatures. You should allow yourself to be swept along

    Alexandra Horowitz

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Details
Author
Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi
Narrator
Vidish Athavale
Duration
10 hours 9 minutes
Release Date
13 August 2026
ISBN
9781803514864
Format
Audiobook
Publisher
Granta Books
Genre
Wildlife: mammals: general interest, Popular science

Synopsis

Silent, solitary and beautiful, snow leopards inhabit the rugged mountains of central Asia, so perfectly camouflaged by their silver-grey pelts that they vanish against the rocks and the cliffs. The biologist and scientist Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi (or Kullu, as he is widely known) has spent twenty years studying these elusive creatures in the wild, exploring their daily challenges, habitat, prey and population, and developing a profound understanding of their lives - with every snow leopard encounter bringing renewed meaning and purpose. Living for months at a time in some of the most remote places on earth, Kullu has pioneered new research that shines fresh light on these charismatic and vulnerable animals, showing how their fate is entangled with the local people and how their survival is central to preserving an austere, delicate ecosystem, increasingly under threat from development and intensifying climate change. Full of groundbreaking science and exhilarating storytelling, The Ghost of the Mountains offers a window into a majestic and endangered world, and gives an intimate view of the snow leopard's precarious existence.

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