by Probir Pramanik in DarjeelingT
HE cool downdraft from the Kanchen-
junga blended with the warm sun on a
crispy summer morning at the out-
doorsy Topkeydara where the insolent
Shifu unwinds on a tree-top perch after
his bamboo breakfast. The five-year-
old male red panda avoids the foot-long lenses
of ‘Instagram upvote hunters’ pointing
towards him from 25-foot below. He cannot
be click-captured today. The seek-out for
Master Shifu, whose animated adaptation
end eared movie-goers around the world in
the Kung Fu Panda franchise, is threatening
to end before it fully unfurled. He is doing the
mushi-finger skadoosh on his biped fans.
Topkeydara in Senchal wildlife sanctuary is a
90-minute drive from Darjeeling town with a5km dirt track detour off the 3 Milestone along
the Ghoom-Jorebungalow Teesta Bazaar road. It
is here that the Padmaja Naidu Himalayan
Zoological Park (PNHZP) has set up the coun-
try’s lone conservation breeding centre for red
pandas and snow leopards—two shy animals
found in the eastern Himalayas, where swirling
mists play hide-and-seek with the sun and the
wind-swept conifers, oak groves and bamboo
forests provide an ideal habitat to these fur balls.
The hillside at the sprawling five-acre enclo-
sure is crimson, flush with rhododendrons—la-
li-gurash—and it is here that the handsome red
pandas with their ruddy furry coats and ban-
dit-mask bright eyes seamlessly melt into the
burst of red flowers, moss and lichen. Of the 21 in
‘captivity’ in this region, seven red pandas are in
Topkeydara and the rest in Darjeeling zoo. Other
than Shifu, the conservation centre has five-A conservation project in
Darjeeling successfully breeds
endangered red pandas to
restore them in the wildA VALLEY
OF PEACE
FOR SHIFU
FUR BALLS
1 July 2019 OUTLOOK 57
Photographs: SANDIPAN CHATTERJEE