India, March 29 -- Delighted cackles broke out just a stone's throw from the quaking Siswan-Baddi highway, accompanied by her theatrics. Shielded by high walls and trees, above the cackler on a Semul tree were black drongos chipping in with merry chirps. A barking deer's alarm call sounded in the jungle below. Leopard? As twilight advanced by a star and a crescent moon, the nightjars sang paeans to the demise of daylight. On the impassive wooden door of the lady's loo, a huntsman spider (as large as a human palm and which does not weave webs to catch prey) swung on frequent movement. The cackler was Jennifer Nandi, India's only professional lady nature guide to the remote outbacks of the North-east, Ladakh's Snow leopard cliffs, Kashmir, Spiti et al. She was speaking on her latest book, 'Ink on the Move', last Sunday at a launch event curated by Antler Woods, Siswan, a nature retreat converted from an erstwhile shikar lodge. Nandi's maiden book, 'No Half Measures' released in 2024, hit Amazon's No.1 in the 'Wildlife and Travel' category. Nandi's books are about what the journeys made of her, of her ardour for uncertainty by voyaging to a finger put on a map, the inner life of a woman traveling alone, and translating her wonder of people, places and nature into words. At 74, Nandi is fighting fit, her skin taut with minimal wrinkles and unstirred by ripples of imminence. Driven by a primeval vitality, Nandi reminds one of the medieval legend of a prized captive female northern goshawk (Shah Baaz), whose spirit could not be quelled by the noble falconer. At the same time, Nandi disarmingly confesses to being a show-off and to an incorrigible indulgence in theatrics to sell her books (it pays, she says!). Widow of a navy officer and the daughter of another one, Nandi had the gall to tell her two fatherless children that they better strike out on their own as she had been beckoned by the call of the wild. In doing so, Nandi swam out from the shores of social compliance and "lady goodness" into unknown seas, devoid of an isle on the horizon....