Ajoba

Ajoba Marathi is a 2014 Marathi film directed by Sujay Dahake and written by Gauri Bapat. Supposedly based on true events. Big Cats, Big Adventure. Malshej Ghat to Mumbai in 29days Ajoba the leopards ambitious trek. Ajoba was rescued from a well and a tracking device was fixed on his neck, before being released back into the wild. He turned out to be one adventurous cat, as he made his way to Mumbai over the Sahyadris, i.e. A cool 120km.

His teeth were yellow, the canines were blunt the leopard was in his prime. In late April 2009, while in hot pursuit of a dog, the cat fell into an open well in the agricultural farmlands of Takli Dokeshwar, north of Pune. Help arrived on the third night, when Forest Department staff lowered a ladder. The feline gingerly walked up and straight into a cage. Vidya Athreya, a researcher, collared the leopard with a GPS transmitter before he was released 60km. away at the foot of Malshej Ghats. For the next year, the collar would send text messages of the cats whereabouts. That was how Ajoba became the first subject of a research project on farmland leopards. Vidya expected him to make a beeline for the fertile farms and prowl amongst the fields of onions, cauliflower and sugarcane. Instead, he began climbing up the hills. That was odd. Then Ajoba disappeared for three days. When the text messages resumed, he was on the other side of the Ghats, down in the Konkan and across the busy MumbaiAgra highway. What is he doing? Vidya wondered in an email. Her heart was in her mouth when he crossed the Kasara railway station, the last stop for suburban trains from Mumbai. If he suffered even a minor mishap, it could be bad for the cat and the research project. By the end of the third week, he had reached the Vasai Industrial Area, a vast spread of factories and buildings, on the outskirts of Mumbai. There was every chance that someone would spot the intruder and raise an alarm. Vidya was on tenterhooks. Older animals like Ajoba do not usually wander far from their established territories. So why was he walking purposefully westward? The following week, Ajoba was in Nagla Block of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, in Mumbai. When two weeks passed and he stayed in that area, Vidya thought he had settled down. Ajoba had walked 120km. in threeandahalf weeks. Then he swam across the Ullas river, entered the main park area for a threeday sojourn, and returned. Three weeks later, the G

Source: Wikipedia