Chamgadarh? Woh toh yahan nahi hote (Bats? You don’t find them here),” a villager said matter-of-factly. His friend added, on a more scientific note, “Yahan toh thand kaafi hoti hai. Thande ilaakon mein chamgadarh nahi hote (It gets quite cold here. you don’t find bats in cold places).” I was in a quaint Garhwali village near Dehradun. I had already spent a week without getting any substantial information on bat sightings. It was late February but the light winter chill meant that bats were still not as active as expected. This was my first time in Uttarakhand cataloguing the echolocation calls of bats to gain an insight into their natural history. Research on bats had earlier taken me to the Andaman Islands.

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