Published in Get Lost Travel Magazine, April 2014

The piercing scream is sudden and unexpected, stopping us in our tracks on the muddy trail. An ugly confrontation is in progress nearby, but only the gnashing and growling makes it beyond the impenetrable wall of bamboo. Moments later, the prize we’ve been seeking for days stumbles out of the forest. It’s dirty and bloodstained, fresh from a brutal mating battle, but it’s the real deal: a rare giant panda.

We’ve come to the wilds of central China – the Foping Nature Reserve, high in the Qin Ling Mountains in Shaanxi province – to photograph pandas in their natural habitat. Tom Rivest, a bear-obsessed Canadian expert who helps tourists get up close to grizzlies at his Great Bear Nature Lodge on British Columbia’s west coast, is our guide.

He’s organised this Chinese bear-watching expedition, paid the many government fees and jumped through bureaucratic hoops to get our small group of eight eager wildlife watchers into this restricted area, where only a handful of tourists are allowed to tread each year. Zoe Zuo of Wild Giant Panda, the Chinese NGO devoted to preserving panda habitat has helped too, securing the permissions, guides and trackers we need for our 10-day stay at the isolated Sanguanmiao Research Station.

It’s estimated 30 pandas live in the immediate area – where experts from around the world come to study them in the wild – but despite our local trackers’ best efforts and the hefty US$5000 price tag for this trip, there is no guarantee we will actually encounter these shy creatures. Still, it’s quite the adventure trying, especially when compared with my previous encounters with captive pandas in China, involving bus tours to Chinese zoos and wildlife parks where adorable, hand-raised pandas entertain crowds by munching bamboo or playing like fuzzy toddlers on jungle gyms.

Pandas are at the top of the A-list when it comes to endangered species. They’re the loveable face of international wildlife conservation, but despite China’s decades of breeding, and ongoing efforts by international groups like the World Wildlife Fund (which uses the panda as its logo), none of these cuddly-looking vegetarians has been successfully reintroduced into the wild. Many, reared in incubators at Chengdu’s Panda Breeding and Research Centre, are destined for China’s “panda diplomacy” program – rented to zoos in China-friendly countries for a cool US$1 million annual fee.

Although once having roamed China, the indigenous bear is now found in just a few isolated pockets in Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces. Sanguanmiao may be the best place to spot one – with two pandas per square kilometre, it has the highest measured density of wild giant pandas in the world. But it’s not easy to make the trip into this remote research reserve or find bears in the rugged terrain once you’re here. The journey begins in Xi’an, the ancient city at the end of the Silk Road, where the famed Terracotta Army was exhumed. Like much of China, the collision between the ancient and the uber-modern worlds is palpable here – farmers till the fields using oxen while the towers of a technology park sprout around them.

It’s a five-hour bus ride from Xi’an into the Qin Ling mountains, then an eight-kilometre hike to the research station in a remote area where a few villagers eke out an existence growing vegetables and raising bees. They will be our mountain guides, trackers and cooks at this rustic station and, when we arrive at the trailhead, they are waiting with sturdy pack ponies ready to transport our gear.
The Chinese government has built a kind of hostel here for panda tourists, but the river expected to provide hydro-electric power, like many in China, has dried to a trickle. Conditions for our stay, therefore, are more rustic than advertised. 


There’s no heating, lighting or functional bathrooms and only sporadic power from a wood-fired generator for charging camera batteries. With snow on the ground some mornings, it’s a challenge. But we take what comes, strapping on our hiking boots and gaiters and heading out early each morning, fortified with thin rice porridge and carrying hard-boiled eggs and apples in our backpacks.
The terrain is beautiful although sometimes treacherous. Trails up through the beehive mountains are steep and, with temperatures hovering around zero degrees Celsius, the ground is either muddy and slick beneath the thick layer of leaf litter or icy and dusted with snow. Our Chinese trackers sprint ahead of us, effortlessly scaling the steep slopes in search of wildlife, while we plod behind, bushwhacking through wet bamboo and tottering across rocky streams.

Mr Zhao scrambles to the top of a tree and scans the dense forest from his perch, a two-way radio clutched to his ear. Even if we don’t find pandas, he is on the lookout for takin – big mountain bovids related to Arctic musk ox – flying squirrels, colourful pheasants and golden snub-nosed monkeys.

We crawl up near vertical slopes to high ridges and wait while they search.
Fibrous green lumps of panda poo are spotted along the trail. When our bilingual and endlessly helpful guide Rolf (aka Yang Liang) gets an urgent call, we run. Mr Zhang and Mr He whisper into their radios and whistle when they see something. We follow their whistles, stumbling through dense bamboo and across icy rocks as they push us along.

“Go, go, panda! Run!” Mr Zhao says, gesturing up the trail.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that a timid panda might be spooked by such commotion and, although we spend 10 days searching, usually there are only glimpses of the rare bears. I’m getting used to bringing up the rear, only to arrive to see a far-off white blur in a sea of tangled bamboo or hear the crushing words “panda gone”. But we’ve come during breeding season, meaning it’s a good time to encounter the males, often several of them, in hot pursuit of a single female and almost oblivious to onlookers. This is what we’ve heard, if not seen, today – a battle for supremacy, our bloodied panda apparently not the victor in this clash.

The bear stops at the edge of the rocky stream separating him from us then sinks into a pool of icy water, panting hoarsely and cooling its wounds. No one moves or speaks, the scene locked into our telephoto lenses.

The panda crawls onto a rock, dries itself with a dog-like shake and lumbers slowly toward us. Water droplets glint on its thick, muddy coat and its dark eyes squint as it picks its way along the stream. We stand motionless, exposed and unable to move to frame the perfect shot or change a setting. There is only the gentle whirring of our cameras’ digital drives.

Suddenly, a small movement or a whiff of human gives us away and the panda bolts, its fat, furry bottom disappearing comically into the dense undergrowth. The encounter is over in just five minutes but it’s truly amazing – one of the world’s last 1600 or so wild pandas was so close I could almost touch it.

It’s not exactly the Kodak moment a photographer dreams about, but we each have our own angle and Rolf, who has dragged me up every gruelling trail, has a grin as wide as this remote mountain valley.

It’s exhilarating to know these wild bears are still here, but sad, too, to know they will likely disappear. Their habitat is declining daily as industry encroaches on forests, rivers are dammed and people become increasingly focused on the economy, building more high-rises and producing more consumer goods for the world.

On our last night we gather in a farmhouse near the station with our Chinese trackers for a special meal. Mr Zhao, his elderly parents, wife and sister prepare a feast from what is left in their winter pantry: strips of egg pancake, curly cloud ear mushrooms and smoky slices of tofu fried with the familiar tongue-tingling Sichuan peppercorns that have flavoured every simple meal. The guides pour rice wine and pass bottles of Great Wall red to toast our successful expedition.

The next morning, after a three-hour uphill hike, we emerge from the forest, exhausted but looking forward to the comfort of a warm bus and the promise of a hot shower. It’s not the kind of posh wildlife tour many in this group have encountered before – either on safari in Africa or tracking polar bears in the Arctic – but this is China and, in hindsight, the adventure trumps the trials of our trip. We’ve shared a rare experience and supported the local people who’ve helped us. This kind of carefully controlled eco-tourism may help establish more reserves like Foping and discourage locals from logging and poaching in areas where pandas 
can still live.

On the way back to Xi’an, our bus makes a stop at Daping Yu Scenic Spot. The large park has a couple of pristine captive pandas and a troupe of golden monkeys that perform when park staff proffer apples. It’s fun – and good luck, according to the Chinese – to see these adorable bears up close, but with a dozen other photographers lined up on the slope snapping away, this is the easy way to watch wildlife. When you find a truly wild panda, thriving in its natural home, I’m certain the good fortune is far greater.