Flip

Tal Chhapar is a small sanctuary, barely seven square kilometres of grass. On a map it looks like nothing. On the ground it holds more than two thousand blackbuck.

The males are the colour of strong coffee, with spiral horns. They hold small territories and spend the mornings pretending not to look at each other.

Indian grey wolves do not announce themselves. In the grasslands west of Jodhpur, you learn to read the land instead: a herd of blackbuck suddenly alert, a shepherd's dogs barking at nothing, a line of fresh tracks across a dirt road that was smooth at sunset.

For eleven mornings I sat in the same spot before dawn, the camera wrapped in an old shawl against the dust. On six of them I saw nothing at all. On three I saw a wolf so far away it was a grey comma on the horizon.

The tenth morning

On the tenth morning a female came out of a ravine with two half-grown pups behind her. She trotted along the ridge, stopped, and turned her head to look straight down the valley toward me. I have no idea whether she saw me. I took four frames and then I simply watched.

The wolves were here before the fields. They are learning to live with us faster than we are learning to live with them.

These wolves live alongside villages, crops and herds of goats, and the relationship is not always gentle. A lost goat is a real loss for a family. Several shepherds told me they would rather the wolves stayed, as long as someone helped when they took livestock.

Grasslands like these are often listed as wasteland on official maps, which makes them easy to give away for solar farms and industry. Every time a patch of grass disappears, the wolves move a little closer to people. The photograph is beautiful, but it is also a record of a place that may not look like this for long.