A jumbo with a tiger face will fly cheetahs to India

Eight cheetahs will reach India later this week from Namibia as part of the effort to reintroduce the big cat in the country.

The cheetahs will head for India in a customised Boeing 747-400 aircraft from Namibia's capital Windhoek, travelling overnight and reaching Jaipur on the morning of Saturday.

The jumbo jet to bring the animals to India has already landed in Windhoek, and a picture from the Indian High Commission in Namibia shows it is painted to suit the grand occasion.


The huge plane has a huge tiger painted on its front, the eyes of the magnificent beast glancing at the mortals on the tarmac from a height of more then 40 feet

"A special bird touches down in the Land of the Brave to carry goodwill ambassadors to the Land of the Tiger," the High Commission tweeted on Thursday.

Cheetahs, the fastest land animals, went extinct in India by 1952, mostly due to sport hunting, over-hunting and habitat loss.

India signed a pact with Namibia on July 20, which is donating eight of these spotted felines - five females and three males - to help reintroduce the species in the country.

Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), an international non-profit dedicated to saving the cheetah in the wild, the five female cheetahs are aged between two years and five years and the male cheetahs are aged between 4.5 years and 5.5 years.

The males include two brothers who always hunt as a pair - that is not surprising, cheetah cubs from the same litter stay together for life and form coalitions to hunt.

After landing in Jaipur, the cheetahs will be flown to their new home in Madhya Pradesh's Kuno National Park in helicopters, PTI reported.

On September 17, his birthday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to release the cheetahs into the wild. A homecoming for the beautiful spotted cat after 70 years.