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his bride, he set out for Girnar, a sacred mountain in Gujarat, 40 miles from the Arabian Sea.
Jain pilgrims climb Girnar, a sacred mountain in Gujarat, 40 miles from the Arabian Sea. (Hashim Badani)
Y OWN ASCENT up Girnar began before dawn. It followed the usual topography of enlightenment. I was to climb 7,000 steps, all built into
the mountain, by nine in the morning, so as not to be late for a ritual at an ancient temple near the peak.
The trail was only 50 miles from Gir National Park, where, the day before, I'd seen two Asiatic lions, nearly indistinguishable cousins of Africa's lions. Once the region's apex predator, the Asiatic lion almost went extinct during the British empire's colonization of India, when no viceroy could visit a maharaja's palace without a hunt in the local forest. Even today, the Asiatic lion still ranks among the rarest of the large feline predators, rarer even than its neighbor to the north, the snow leopard, which is so scarce that a glimpse of one padding down a jagged Himalayan crag is said to consummate a spiritual pilgrimage.
