ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER 2018, I found myself driving through a stretch of the Thar Desert. The landscape was all sand, broken by patches of shrubs, as far as the eye could see, and I felt a surreal and slightly alarming absence of greenery and human presence. I was on my first visit to Sudasari Desert National Park, about sixty kilometres away from Jaisalmer, in Rajasthan. The national park is home to the great Indian bustard, a critically endangered bird species, and my travel companions and I cut trails through the desert in open jeeps in search of them. We spotted a few birds hiding in bushes. It was a brief encounter that would lead me to a much longer association with the custodians of the endangered birds. Soon after spotting the bustards, I met Pushpa Shekhawati and Pushta Pawar, two women forest guards who lived and worked in the sparse environs of the little-known park.
When I met them
