India Tiger Photo Safaris
2012
Trip Report, Trip One

Read our Trip Two 2012 Trip Report, too!

 

Read our Complete Trip Journals,
day-to-day accounts of our 2011
Scouting Trips:
Trip One
Trip Two
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It was great to return to India, conducting our first ‘official’ photo safari here after last year’s extremely successful series of ‘scouting’ trips. Having the benefit of a year’s experience showed, but showed in numerous small ways that translated into better shots for everyone on the trip. For example, we now knew where to expect a Brown Fish Owl, or where to really concentrate on tigers,  and, basically, simply what to expect where.
The group had some spectacular opportunities with tigers, including one session where the big male tiger, New Male, stepped into a stream and laid down, and posed, for ten minutes or more, within frame-filling distance of a 200mm lens. I wasn’t there for that shot, but I truly lusted after that type of shot, as it was a stellar opportunity. Other great tiger highlights included Mary and Don’s vehicle having near 1.5 hours with a tiger, and Don and Judy’s encounter with one lying in the middle of the dirt track as they headed back from the morning game drive. Everyone ended up getting great shots at one point or another, including me, although I probably had the worst luck of anyone on the trip. However, on one afternoon Phil and I had two great tigers, and the shots are among my favorites of all the tiger images I’ve made.
Park Two is my favorite park for although it has fewer tiger sightings – our group only had three or four--  the scenery and diversity of wildlife provides exciting shooting every game drive. This year, both Mary and I found ourselves solo in a vehicle, as park regulations do not allow vehicle assignments to be changed. I didn’t want to do a boring game drive where I spent all my time, probably fruitlessly, looking for tigers, so I proposed a challenge to Mary. It was to see who would make the better Park Two portfolio, shooting whatever we wished and not worrying about tigers. Both of us had incredible mornings, without tigers, but with plenty of great images. Our drivers and guides got into the spirit of the competition as we would both share our shots via the camera’s LCD monitor, and they were finding subjects right and left! Mary and I ended up on completely different routes so our coverage was quite different, and it generated an idea for the next group – a shooting assignment so that they, too, can work on a broad portfolio. By the way, the winner of the contest was …. We declared it a true tie, as our material was so different and diverse and good that a winner would have been far too subjective.

The following is my daily journal chronicling our first of two Tiger and India  Wildlife Photo Tours for 2012.

Day 0, the Delhi tour.

The group arrived at various times over the last two days with the last people getting in safely last evening. This morning we did a tour of Delhi and of Old Delhi, the latter almost a journey back in time as we negotiated the narrow winding streets by bicycle rickshaw. Mary had never done this tour before and she rode with me, and like everyone else she loved it. Our shooting in Old Delhi was literally on the fly, where we used wide-angles to fire as we sailed past shops and vendors and people.
We visited the War Monument, which has the carved names of everyone who died in India’s wars in the modern era, excepting WWII, and where we shot vendors, monument scenes, and people. From there we visited the Old Red Mosque where we had an hour for more shots, including for Mary and I our first visit to one of the high minarets where we climbed 120 steep, winding steps to reach the top where a rather narrow wire fence made shooting somewhat difficult. Still, for $2 it was good exercise, and we did have a view of the sprawling city.
The following morning we flew without hassle to the nearest city to our first park, followed by a 5 or 6 hour drive.  And here, I start the journal proper:

Day 1-2. Park One

This morning we did our first game drive, and the hassles and confusion we felt last year seem a bit more tolerable this year, nothing has changed but we understand and or accept or acquiesce to the system now, and so it seems tolerable. Our arrival, yesterday evening just after dusk could not have been more auspicious. A large tiger crossed the road in front of us a few miles out from the main Park gate. Mary, in the second vehicle in our convoy for 3, saw glowing eyes in the headlights, while I, in the first vehicle, saw a big low dark shape scoot across the road. I immediately grabbed our driver and said ‘Tiger!,’ but he ignored me. Seconds later, he saw the cat now on the side of the road in low grass, and he started excitedly yelling tiger, too! The cat quickly moved off into the bamboo where we had a final look, a dark silhouette slipping through a clearing.
Our travels from Delhi to the park when uneventfully, and this year we passed on visiting the karma sutra monuments near Kajaraho. Driving direct, we drove by the large fruit bat or flying fox tree we’d seen on earlier trips close to sunset, but now seen in almost mid-day light. That was comforting, for we still had nearly three hours of driving to go.
En route we stopped for the drivers to have their tea break, while the rest of us bought 30 rupee sodas (about 70 cents) and 20 cent bags of potato chips that held about ten medium sized chips. The bathrooms here were crude, the typical one-holer with foot pads on either side, and although somewhat disgusting I commented that those facilities were an upgrade for at least a half billion people, I’m sure, and that’s just those that live in India.
Our morning game drive started clear and very cool, with perfectly clear star-filled skies. Several different routes were assigned, and Judy and Don’s vehicle had a truly extraordinary first morning, with a brief look at a Sloth Bear and an OK photo session with a Tiger that crossed in front of them. Cindy and I had a slow first half of the morning, but after breakfast we stopped when we, and others, heard the alarm calls of Languar Monkeys. Eventually they quieted down and we concluded they had seen a leopard, but later we met a mahot who told us of a tiger further up the road.
We found her, but after moving around on the steep hillside she moved down into the bamboo where we could see her, but with no really decent shots. I took some record shots just to break the ice. We did hear her call for her cubs, however, and that was thrilling, a deep, low-frequency roaring rumble, followed by higher pitched caterwauling. I thought she was in heat and advertising herself, but we were told, at least, that she was calling for her three cubs.

‘There she is! See her? There! There!’ My driver and the park naturalist were both standing, pointing into the forest and towards a stand of bamboo, all excitedly urging us to see the cat.
I usually have a good search image, the mind’s eye view that is so helpful for actually spotting game, and I thought I could make out the head and shoulders of the tiger, truly just a slightly darker smudge of russet against the gray-brown forest of bamboo. With binoculars up, I confirmed the view. The cat never moved while we were there, although we tried several vantages for a better angle. Lying down, but with her head up and looking about, the tigress simply merged with the chaotic jumble of the forest. One might question a tiger’s stripes – they seem so vivid when seen in the context of a zoo. The striped pattern makes sense, too, in a grassland environment at dawn or dusk, when sharp shadows and golden light would melt tiger and grasses into one. While I’ve seen tigers literally disappear once they’ve stepped off a trail and into the bamboo, today’s study really reinforced the sense that this cat, almost like no other, can literally vanish before your eyes. Even in bamboo, the pattern of shadows of the forest and the stripes and background coloration of the tiger truly made it nearly invisible.

With two different tigers spotted, and a sloth bear and a golden jackal, it was a good morning to start.
PM. We left at 2:30, and within minutes were at the gate where we waited the long half hour for the park to officially open. We had the same route as this morning, although we had a new park naturalist or guide, and this one was good. We had no luck, but the driver and guide worked intelligently, circling and returning to the same area repeatedly, where we’d seen the tigress earlier in the day.
This particular route is not game-rich, at least for shooting opportunities, and Cindy and I shot very little. Our path traced spots where, last year, I’d seen many tigers, and I realized that tigers could be anywhere – to a newcomer like Cindy every area looks about the same, and points out that while I’d seen a cat here or there, that fact simply reinforces the fact that a cat might be anywhere. As the day ended we were within a quarter mile of our morning sighting and Langur Monkeys were barking in alarm, but the clocked ticked down and we had to leave, reaching the gate just minutes before closure.
John and Susan had a different route, and although they spent their first hour in our area, looking for the tigress and cubs, they later headed to a different sector. There they encountered New Male, lying in a waterhole. The tiger left the water and moved into the forest, but Susan got some nice shots of the whole event!
Our total – an incredible 3 tigers for the first day, and 1 sloth bear!

Day 3, Park One

AM. What may have been an incredibly slow and fairly unproductive morning in the park climaxed, near closing, with a spectacular tiger sighting for Don and Judy. Their morning had been rather slow, with little noteworthy but as they drove back to the lodge the male tiger from yesterday lay sprawled out and sleeping in the track before them. They were the fourth vehicle in line, in a traffic jam caused by the tiger blocking the road, and the view of the tiger was blocked. By using their monopods, however, they were able to raise their cameras high enough to shoot over the people in front, and they made some great shots. The tiger woke and yawned three times before eventually rising and walking off the track.
Judy said she thought her driver drove fast, but she discovered what fast really meant as her vehicle raced back, trying to get as close to the 10:30AM deadline as possible. Nonetheless, they arrived at the gate 15 minutes late, with the other three vehicles that were waylaid by the sleeping tiger.
Mary had a pretty successful morning with some birds, including a nice portrait of an Indian bee-eater against a clean background, and a fairly close Shikra, an accipiter hawk similar to our Cooper’s hawk. She had a very cooperative Rhesus Macaque Monkey in great light, my favorite of her shots.
My morning with John was fairly slow, with some nice bird sightings – tree swifts, Scops owls, brown fish owl, and long-billed vultures, and we had some success with Spotted Deer and Langur Monkeys, including a small monkey who hopped over its mothers head and played with a slightly larger juvenile.

This park is a rugged, hilly country, with many of the hillsides nearly bare, covered with a thin veneer of grasses and, where crevices allow for the anchoring of roots, scattered copses of trees. One of our routes climbs over 400 feet before cresting and descending again into the more easily traveled valleys. In the morning, in the cold, everyone notices the dramatic temperature change as we climb from the chill lowlands to suddenly clement air. Cold air settles, warm air rises, and this little bit of physics is clearly on display as we proceed along the park’s more mountainous routes.

PM. We had the same route that we had in the morning, which was somewhat encouraging since the morning’s tiger was on one of these routes. We spent nearly two hours cruising back and forth between two crossing points where, earlier, the male tiger had traveled. Nothing showed up.
In our last hour, with the need to complete the circuit, we drove on, getting some nice shots of a back-lighted Spotted Deer in velvet. Earlier, while we waited in relative silence, listening for the alarm calls heralding a tiger, several spotted deer fed nearby. The does would grab an entire leaf that had dropped, still green, from the trees overhead and noisily munch it down. We were an easy thirty yards or further away but the sound of the crunching and chewing was clearly audible, and I suspect that any tiger within 100 yards could easily home in on the sound.
We drove past the pool where yesterday the male tiger was photographed and today as we approached I saw a large, dark, round shape moving along slowly. It was a large male Wild Boar and it looked as if it were chewing on white paper, its jaws working and white sheets bobbing. Through my lens I saw that the white was slobber, and the boar was, apparently, in rut. As it walked along it grabbed twigs and shrubs and thick grass stems between his jaws, rubbing its snout up and down and laying thick gobs of saliva or goo on the stems. The shooting was spectacular – a front view, full-frame, with is disk-like snout facing out clearly. The boar didn’t stay long but turned and trotted back towards the woods, and I couldn’t help but think that this was clearly easy tiger bait, as the boar had only one thing on his mind.
Meanwhile, towards the end of the day, the only vehicle assigned to a different route – Judy and Don’s, had another tiger! Again they were about the sixth vehicle to line up but the other vehicles were quite cooperative, making room so that their vehicle could squeeze in for the shots. The result was a great view, but also an uplifting appreciation for the cooperation that all of the drivers showed.
Our total – two more tigers, for a total of 5

Day 4, Park One

There is a change in the air. Although it was still cold, the morning heated up rather quickly heralding the heat of summer. The festival of Holi, marking summer, is just days away and the calendar and timing of the festival certainly are agreeing with the weather change.
We did not have a tiger this morning, although Mary’s vehicle followed the tracks of New Male until it moved off into another Jon, or park sector, where they were unable to follow. We held a vigil at the site where the tigers were seen last evening, quite close to where I had the tiger on the first day. No tracks led from the area so the drivers were fairly confident that the tiger or tigers were there, but an elephant search came up with nothing. Later, one of the tigers was seen atop a distant rock, validating the drivers’ suspicions, but by the time we arrived the cats had slipped back into the brush.
For most it was a bird morning, and Mary had a good photo op with the Malabar Pied Hornbill and Judy and I with a fairly close Scop’s Owl. Mary also had a Brown Fishing Owl perched on the ground, and she managed a fairly decent shot as it took off and flew to a perch.
One of our participants banged his head against the wooden sidebars that we had installed as beanbag braces – the small jeeps we use normally have no provision for a support, other than the very low sidewall or the various roll bars, either over the front and back, and the seat rests for the two rows. I’ve hit my head, too, on a bumpy road, and quickly learned to sit in the middle where a bubble-head won’t wobble into the wooden beams. That hurts. Our client was concerned because he’d done this once before – in Kenya, and had his retina detached, and, quite understandably, he didn’t want that to happen to his other eye! The camp staff was more than accommodating and one of our wooden sidebars will be removed, and we’ll keep the couple in this special jeep.
PM. In this park each vehicle is assigned a specific route, a very random affair where any given vehicle could, in theory, get the same route for every game drive. Some routes may have had a tiger sighting previously, and are thought to be the ‘best’ for the next rotation. But the tourists have no say in this, and the cards just fall as they may.
As it is, however, tigers can be anywhere and a less productive route one day may be the best the next, and so, this afternoon on what had been an unproductive morning route ended to be spectacular. Mary drew it, and had 1 hour and 45 minutes with a very cooperative tiger, that first slept on the road, then rolled, yawned, got up, switched positions, and eventually walked down the track, checking and sniffing trees, lying down again, repeating the process, until finally walking to yesterday’s waterhole where it drank. Mary left just prior to that point, but one of the guides climbed atop the roll bar of his vehicle and hand-held a 600mm, shooting some really great images as the tiger walked down the shoreline and drank from the pool. Doris and Sue were there for much of the best of the shoot, getting the tiger walking right next to their vehicle, and Jim and Helena got the water shots courtesy of their guide’s work. Mary and Don had the best show, actually finding the tiger and being in the lead the entire time.
My vehicle, with Judy, had a great afternoon that ended with a brief, tiny glimpse of one of the tiger cubs we’d seen on our first morning’s game drive. I made a record shot, for fun, but that one will quickly be deleted. The tiger I had on Day 1, which I was told was a female and that we heard calling, presumably to its cubs, was actually one of the cubs. A close look at one of the images when it yawned revealed the small, juvenile canine teeth.
Regardless of our failure with tigers, compared to the other vehicles, we had the best afternoon I’ve had in the park. We went slow, spending over an hour in the first series of meadows, areas where we normally race by in the heat of the day or too early, or too late, for any shooting. We started with one of the best Sambar’s I’ve shot, a cow that was feeding, face-on and full-frame, in a roadside pool. Later we did Languar monkeys and Spotted Deer at another pool, catching reflections of each. An Adjutant Stork flew overhead, circling twice for nice shots, and later, on the hillsides, we did a troop of Languars as they ran across the grasses and down slope. Our last hour was spent waiting on tigers that did not appear, but as we drove home we had that brief sighting.
This gave us two tigers for the day, raising our total to 7, or one per game drive and an extra on our drive in!

Day 5, Park One, Sector Two

My park guide last evening raved about the tiger sightings in the Jon 2 section of the park where there are no assigned routes and, with fewer tigers, less traffic. We decided to give it a try, and the group was rewarded with THREE more tigers. At one point, after Mary’s vehicle followed alarm calls to their source, she spotted a tiger down one of the vehicle tracks while her driver spotted another on a different track! At one point, three of our vehicles were on separate tigers at one time. One of the males with Mary was calling repeatedly, giving the ‘huh huh huh’ call similar to a lion’s. Tigers had circled the area and at times they were out of sight, leading to some initial confusion as to whether there were two or three cats. Sambar, spotted deer, and langur monkeys all gave their alarm calls, letting the forest know predators were about.
Our driver and guide heard distant alarm calls, but perhaps on the advice of a passing vehicle we didn’t follow up on the calls and we continued on what would prove to be a tiger-free morning. Don and Doris’s vehicle did well with some birds, seeing a Crested Serpent Eagle eating a snake, and photographing a White-eyed Buzzard mating. My vehicle had some luck with Langur monkeys playing, with the juveniles jumping up to a thick strangler fig vine, then leaping to a hanging vine where they swung back and forth, periodically coming into view or lost behind a thick tree.
The drive in this sector, or Jon, is much more pleasant than the prime tiger area, as the roads are mostly sandy with few bumps. And, without an assigned route, there is not the pressure to get somewhere in time to make the return journey, which sometimes requires a true break-neck speed race. Last evening, Cindy was almost rocketed out of her vehicle, and her camera fell to the floor (fortunately undamaged) as her driver sped back to camp. Her driver, and mine, had waited as long as we could for the tiger cub to show itself atop the ridge, and were now under the Park deadline of 6PM, requiring a fast drive. Some felt, and I agree, that the guides should give enough time for a sane drive home, even if that is at the expense of a tiger sighting, or to give the passengers the option of the death ride!
Tiger total, is now 10.
PM. Success at last. Now, everyone has seen and photographed a tiger, including Phil who was with me today and had, to date, not even seen one. I hadn’t had much better luck, having seen four but really poor images to show for it. That changed on this evening’s game drive.
We headed back to Jon 1, and for once my vehicle drew two routes that have been productive the last few days, and fortunately the order of the routes was favorable as well. Our driver today was perhaps the best I’ve had, stopping intelligently at anything that interested us, and our park guide was extremely quiet, as if he would be a mediocre guide. He was not.
Our drive started out with three extremely cooperative Wild Hogs, a male, female, and juvenile that fed near the road and crossed it twice, fairly oblivious to vehicles. Oddly, this boar had really huge testicles, while the boar I photographed two days ago, which I presumed was in rut, had rather small testicles. I’d have expected the reverse.
We had our best shooting opportunity with a Rhesus Macaque Monkey¸ sitting by the road and frame-filling distance with my 70-300mm lens. Several Langur Monkeys perched in trees were knocking the flowering branches of Sal trees to the ground, where Spotted Deer roamed about, picking up the left-overs. The two often associate together, with the deer clearly enjoying the greater benefit as the arboreal monkeys are the first to spot danger, and their messy eating drops plenty of otherwise impossible to reach leaves and flowers to the forest floor, where the deer follow and feed.
By 5 it was Tiger Time, and we started heading to the waterhole that was so productive yesterday afternoon. No cars were travelling our way, a good indication that something was happening ahead. Eventually we passed one of our jeeps, and the driver told us that there was a tiger at the waterhole. Jim and Helena, in that vehicle, had two great opportunities at that time, and a later one, at a stream, towards the end of the day.
We started down the track slowly, but I figured that there was probably an incredible traffic jam at the waterhole and it wouldn’t matter. The tiger had left the water and was now sleeping in a thicket of bamboo, where we could just barely see a flipping tail and some stripes. This tail-end was Phil’s first tiger sighting but it wasn't too exciting.
The tiger got up and disappeared into the forest, and we drove on a hundred yards or so and waited. Eventually, the tiger reappeared, walking through some fairly high grass but presenting an excellent view. Then it disappeared. We waited, and a few minutes later it reappeared, further back on the track and we were out of position. Our driver spun the vehicle incredibly quickly, and then, somehow, dodged and weaved between an impossible traffic pile up to get us in the front position just as the tiger reached the road edge. Almost equally incredibly, my first images were sharp, considering we were still rocking violently from our sudden stop. The tiger crossed the road, paused, and continued across an open field, a wonderful first sighting and shoot for Phil, and truly a first class shoot for anyone.
We headed home, now with some extra time for a more leisurely direct route. We were on the main road when another tiger, New Male – that Helena photographed at the stream bathing and drinking! – walked through the bamboo. Our park guide, who had been so quiet, was now a dynamo, predicting where the tiger would be and coaching us to get ready. The tiger came exactly as expected. Again, our driver did an incredible job, racing down the road and finding a tiny opening between a speeding vehicle and a roadside tree and darted to the lead, positioning us at the creek where we expected the tiger to cross. It didn’t, but instead crossed behind us, presenting a wonderful ‘looking up’ view, lower than ground level, as he entered an opening, then crossed the vehicle track, walked by us, and eventually disappeared into the jungle.  What an ending!
Mary had returned to camp a bit earlier as one of the participants was tired, and she met me at the gate with wine. Unfortunately our celebration was cut short, as one of our other vehicles had had a terrible afternoon with a driver and park guide who virtually ignored them, and really compromised what could have been a very good tiger experience with them as well. The result – we replaced that driver with another that we had last year, one of my favorite’s.
Tiger Total: 12

Day 6, Park One

We spent the morning in Jon Two, where there has been a good amount of tiger activity and, theoretically, fewer people and without an assigned route. Today that gate was crowded, with over 25 vehicles stacked up, but once inside the park we saw few people, and only at the end, when people begin congregating near the exit, did we meet a large cluster of vehicles, all waiting on a tiger that had earlier crossed the road.

I was with a good tiger team, with a Park guide who’s been assigned to our non-English speaking driver, and they’ve had great luck over the days. They were funny to watch, as the Park guide was older and definitely assertive. Once, when the young driver stopped at another vehicle and began talking, the guide simply shoved him roughly and, in Hindi, must have said ‘let’s go.’ He started up his car immediately.
We had plenty of tiger tracks, males, females, and smaller tracks, and we sped along the sandy trails of this sector hoping to overtake a cat. We did not.
After breakfast we drove around a large lake I was unaware of, and although it looked like prime tiger habitat we saw nothing. Alarm calls, all morning, were strangely silent, and there was no clue that a tiger was nearby, but it was, and Don and Susan had it on the same lake trail just a few minutes after we had passed! Earlier they had seen another tiger, and this one, spotted at 200 yards, ended up walking parallel to them and eventually crossing the road. Later, their driver showed me a beautiful, full-frame cell phone image he’d made!
As we headed towards the exit gate we ran into the first cluster of vehicles, waiting on the unseen tiger. Time was running short but suddenly the alarm calls of both Spotted Deer and Langurs started, and a few minutes later a tigress walked across the road behind us, about 80 yards away. It was too far for a shot, and we were completely unprepared. Later, it followed the trail of a group of running spotted deer, and when it passed through an opening we were ready and aimed, although I forgot to reset my exposure and ended up severely over-exposing the mediocre tiger opportunity! Still, I rarely ignore a meter like that, so I was annoyed at myself, although it was still great to have my sixth tiger, bringing our group total to 15 in 6 days of game drives.
Tiger Total: 15
PM, We headed back to Jon Two, with my vehicle the first in line, raising hopes and expectations that we might meet a tiger on the road. We didn’t, and instead we continued on to the area where Don and Susan had the tiger in the AM. We found fresh tracks, but no tiger, although we heard a few alarm calls which may have been false alarms.
Mary’s vehicle and two others stayed around the first waterhole where the male tiger had been seen earlier, and after less than an hour’s wait the tiger came out of the forest, onto the pond bank, and down to drink, providing nice images through the whole sequence. After drinking, the tiger climbed onto the pond bank and laid down, then continued along the fields and stone wall, again giving some nice shots – a bit more distant but in good light. At one point Mary thought the tiger was going into a crouch, stalk, and charge at prey, but instead it had gone into a crouch, sneak, and run because a man was walking along the fence row and frightened the tiger off!
We did at have a view of a Jungle Cat, but I was too late in getting my gear up when it was in the clear, and later Don and Susan had another view of it, or another, in high grasses. With the growing heat the dust is getting a bit greater, if that’s possible, and tonight I really wished I had a painter’s face mask or filter – I’m tired of breathing in all this stuff!
Tiger Total: 16, and now 2 Jungle cats (at least).

Day 7, Park One.

We headed back into Jon One, but five of our six vehicles drew some variation of the two less productive routes, and it showed. One vehicle, on a different route, had a back end of a tiger for our 17th of the trip, but otherwise it was an extremely slow morning. On our route, game is often scarce and it certainly was today, although we took the time to shoot some Langur Monkeys that posed on a tree beside the road.
Tiger Total, 17, 2 jungle cats
PM
After lunch we headed to our next park, Park Two, and after negotiating the first several miles of very bumpy, destroyed macadam, the highway smoothed out and we made the trip to the park in great time, about 6 hours total, on good roads without any disasters.

Day 8, Holi.

The park, and virtually the country, was closed today as it is the Festival of Holi, or Holi Day, the festival of color that celebrates the transition from spring (or winter) to summer. Called the festival of color, one of the defining aspects of the day is the riotous good fun, generally manifested by throwing or smearing or rubbing colors of varying hues upon another. At our camp things started out tame, with several palettes of color laid out on a table, and all of us dutifully daubed each other in colors. I painted Mary’s face as a tiger, as best I could, mixing colors to make a black, and improvising to try to get white.
Later, the fun began, and the staff started sneaking up on one another, or on us, with buckets of water. I think I was the first doused, and I felt like an NFL coach after a game, suddenly soaked with gatoraide. Later, Mary and our camp hostess got doused by me as they innocently posed for a photo, and the staffer that got me got doused, by me, when he posed for a photo. There was a lot of running around and a lot of laughter, and, with an 8AM breakfast, a nice rest and recovery after the 6 days of hard photography and game driving that we’ve been doing.
Everyone will be ready for tomorrow, with our tiger count now at 17. This park was our favorite last year for its diversity, and I told our drivers and our participants that with everyone now having some tiger photography, and some great stuff, in the can, that it was time to work on other subjects as well. More tigers will undoubtedly come, but there are too many good subjects here – birds, gaur, several species of deer, monkeys, etc. that it’d be foolish to waste time racing about for tigers. I’m looking forward to the change!

Day 9, Park Two.

AM. Last night I set a camera trap, via the Range IR and two flashes, along a game trail near our cottage but nothing came by. I’d hoped for a Jungle Cat or wild boar, or even a Leopard, but with several nights I still might have some luck.
This morning started out cold, and even Jim used a blanket for the speedy commute to the gate. Last fall, the park received a good amount of rain, over 2 meters, and there is much more water about than what we’d seen last year, and perhaps because of the abundance of water tiger sightings have been fewer, and quite scattered. We saw several sets of tracks, but since the park had been closed for a day and a half they could have been quite old. One set lay adjacent to a large set of Sloth Bear tracks, the first I’ve seen any evidence of in this park.
Knowing that the tiger sightings would be far more random and scattered, I’d prepped everyone on simply enjoying   the park for all it   has to offer, which it   does with Barasinga, Sambar, and Spotted Deer, hog, golden jackal, leopards, tigers, and a variety of birds.
We photographed one pair of male Peacocks who continually circled one another, a behavior they’ll do as they size each other up for a possible fight. They circled repeatedly, and once one bird flapped, but that was the extent of the contest, and, perhaps with no females nearby, a squabble was pointless.
Two days ago I watched my first peacock of this year going through its fan display, where the feathers were curved so far forward over the peacock’s body that they almost created a circle or cradle around the two peahens nearby, who pecked along on the ground seemingly completely unimpressed by the display. This tail is one of the extreme examples of sexual selection, where the female’s preference for a particular characteristic may make that trait more prominent, and perhaps exaggerated, as is the case with the peacock. At some point, any such characteristic can reach a point of diminishing returns, as too long a tail can become more of a liability than an asset, in that there is a greater handicap for travel, flight, or eluding predators than there is an advantage in attracting the attention of a female.
This has been demonstrated quite effectively with African widowbirds, a grackle-like black bird where the males of most species sport long tails. One, the Long-tailed Widowbird, has a huge tail, and from the distance it reminds me, in flight, of a flying black sock. Widowbirds were used to illustrate this sexual selection, where some had their long tails cut short, others had extra long feathers added, and, as a control, some had their tail feathers cut off and then reattached, to eliminate the variable of human handling. As expected, the birds with the greatest breeding success were those with the longest, artificially added tails. In the wild, however, this longer length may simply be too great for long-term survival, so although a female might be attracted to even bigger tails, there apparently is some limit, selection-wise, that a male will go to!
We did quite well today with birds of prey, and in our ‘smelling the roses’ game drive I shot White-eyed Buzzards, Shikras (an accipiter), and a juvenile Crested Hawk-Eagle, aka Changeable Hawk Eagle. The highlight, however, was the group of Spotted Deer feeding at a mango tree where the bucks would rise on their hind legs, like a gerenuk or ambitious dik-dik, to browse the leaves. There was a clear browse-line evident in this and many of the other trees we saw.
PM. A fairly slow afternoon. Our game drive started with a herd of Spotted Deer that congregated around a termite mound, folded and creased into a castle-like structure, giving a nice habitat shot incorporating the two. With some confusion I tried shooting a well posed Barasinga deer, but the camera wouldn’t fire. Finally, after missing a few nice poses I noticed the warning, No CF Card! in the viewfinder. I replaced a card, then found my IS was not activated, and after trouble-shooting that I still managed to get some shots.
We spent the rest of the time circling around through the forest, visiting Baba Tinka which, last year, was a great location to wait and hope for tigers. This year, with the amount of water about, this waterhole is virtually absent of game, and although if we spent much time there animals would probably show up, the time/benefit just doesn’t seem worth it.
Oddly, this year the wildlife in this park seems a bit less, and the locations where we had great bee-eaters is empty. Tiger tracks are common, but without a definite waterhole the chance of finding one seems quite random. Time will tell, as we have a few more days here.

Day 10, Park Two.

Three people skipped on the game drive this morning due to illness. An intestinal bug has hit with varying intensity over the last two days, and with the schedule predetermined and unchangeable, by the park, Mary and I and Cindy all had solo vehicles. With the surprising lack of tigers, this could have resulted in a boring, conversation-free drive, but instead I challenged Mary to a ‘best morning portfolio,’ where we would select our best 10 or 20 shots from the morning and decide who did the better.
Our routes ended up completely different and we didn’t see each other all morning. Several of our vehicles, including Mary’s and mine, had some luck with one of the really trophy animals, the Dhole or Indian Wild Dog. We found a pair of adults and four young, and Mary got some OK shots – mine were truly animals in habitat. Mary did extremely well on birds, spending some of the morning in open country where she got some nice bee-eaters, a black-shouldered kite, and numerous other birds, and Langur Monkeys drinking or eating mineral salts.
I spent the majority of the morning on one stretch of road, the ‘river route’ that for a short distance parallels the river that borders the park. Like Mary, I stopped for everything – backlighted leaves and trees, ghost trees – the white barked gum trees, landscapes, birds, and monkeys.

At one point we came on semi-cooperative langur monkeys that drew my attention when several galloped across the vehicle track. One, high overhead, jumped from tree to tree, giving me the idea to try shooting the monkeys as they jumped, and I had multiple opportunities in several different trees. The results were spectacular, as I caught monkeys on motor-drive in several positions as they spanned huge gaps, and my new, rather small 70-300 did a great job of focus tracking, with all images sharp!
As the morning ended I finally saw the wild dogs, and although we waited at a crossing point the dogs, apparently, went to rest in the forest. After 30 minutes or so of waiting, we headed on to a very late breakfast.
PM. Don joined me for the afternoon, but again we tried to maximize every opportunity and did fairly well with birds, especially raptors. My 500 and camera did a rather poor job of follow-focusing on a Changeable Hawk-Eagle flying to a nest in a silk tree standing isolated in a large clearing. We had two different shooting opportunities with the accipiter, the Shikra, and several others close but in poor light. While we searched for landscapes the route we took didn’t provide anything dramatic during sweet golden light time, although in the gold light we did have four Barasingas, or Swamp Deer, wading or swimming in the large lake where, last year, I had the tiger and three cubs.

Day 11, Park Two.

It was a bit warmer this morning, and so some of the magic of a misty forest and steaming streams was gone, but any light wasn’t helped by the slowness at the gate this morning, as we entered several minutes later than normal. Both Mary and I were glad that we had challenged each other yesterday, as today the shooting was much slower.
We headed straight into the core of the park to start, passing the pond where Mary shot a nice misty bird shot yesterday at dawn but today, although still slightly steaming, the light had already turned to white. The Wild Dogs were visible in the distance, and one bounded along in high, chest-raising hops, a behavior I’d seen with wolves and coyotes when approaching a kill and looking for danger. I was wondering if they were still hunting, hopping high to look for game, but some crows in the distance indicated a kill, and later two jackals moving by seemed to confirm this. Later, just before our 9:30AM breakfast, the dogs had passed close to the center point, and crossed two roads, ending up in the shade in a grassy meadow. None of our groups was there, but it would have been good shooting!
Cindy and John did see a tiger, one that apparently the mahouts had pushed out of the forest. Four elephants flanked the tiger and herded it towards the vehicles, which were lined up waiting. This type of behavior is what many rightly criticize about the mahouts and elephants, and the ‘tiger shows,’ and this might bring an end, eventually, to any elephant-back viewing. That’s unfortunate, as done ethically and with some sensitivity it could be a real bonus.
Since last year the forest department has more than doubled the number of waterholes in this park, placing them inside the forest. Doing this, tigers have no need to visit some of the usual ponds, and with the high water this year, from heavy monsoon rains, there is still water virtually everywhere. Consequently, we’re not seeing tigers in a park where, last year, we’d have one almost every game drive.
We did well with Langur Monkeys, and Judy and I did come upon a small group of jumpers, and from our slightly different angles Judy caught a wonderful back-lighted langur framed against distance trees as it jumped to a lower branch. From my position, just three feet to the left, I had bright sky, not dark trees, so the effect was not nearly as striking.
As we headed to breakfast Judy spotted a Golden Jackal close to the road and as we screeched to a stop another, closer and unnoticed, walked into view. Both eventually crossed the road, giving frame-filling shots as they passed by. Probably my highlight was the two encounters we had with a Little Cormorant. The first time, the cormorant flew to the bridge in front of us to dry and sun, spreading its wings out. We almost had to bump it with the front of our jeep to get it to fly, which we needed to do because other vehicles behind us were clamoring for us to get off the bridge. The second time, the cormorant swam from beneath the bridge, then swam to a log where it sunned itself again, giving a nicer, more natural perch.

PM. While yesterday afternoon was slow, and this morning was nothing like the day before, this afternoon’s game drive would have been a perfect companion to our ‘A Morning in Kanha’ challenge, as this easily could have been termed ‘An Afternoon in Kanha!’ We traveled only as far as the breakfast spot, usually a 15 minute drive from the entrance.
Our afternoon started with langur monkeys close to the entrance where we photographed a mother and baby. The baby nursed for a long time, then the mother unexpectedly got up and ran off, with the baby screaming and trying to catch up. The mother climbed a tree and the baby tried scrambling up a smaller tree, but unsuccessfully. Eventually we lost the baby in the undergrowth, and the mother somewhere in the tree canopy. We have no idea if she later reclaimed the baby, although I suspect it did, but we also have no clue as to why the mother suddenly bolted off. It wasn’t disturbed, it just ran.
Judy wanted to see a Jungle Owlet and after our guide stopped for a Scop’s Owl, perched in a roadside knothole we’ve passed many times, I spotted two Owlets on a sapling – something the driver and guide missed! That is a real coup, as the drivers and guides are absolutely incredible spotting distant critters or birds high in the tree, seemingly while they’re simply looking straight down the road.

A large herd of Barasinga Deer entered a stubble-covered field, giving us nice herd shots in good light, and earlier, Mary’s vehicle, and Cindy’s, had them either in water, with nice reflections, or with the babies running about playing. Just a bit further up the road two bull Barasinga Deer fed in another pond. Here they were backlighted, offering pretty dramatic lighting, and Mary’s shots, taken earlier, and mine were quite different. Her session had the deer actively bringing their heads up from the water as they fed, causing cascading streams of water flying about, while my deer kept their heads down, or stood and posed. A flock of Common Mynabirds flew in, feeding like oxpeckers off the deer.
While we photographed the deer a Black Drongo perched nearby for some good shots, but a short distance up the road, later, another perched so close that it barely fit within the camera frame. Just a bit further, an Indian Roller perched upon a termite mound, then flew off, caught a white grub (probably a beetle larvae) and returned to the mound to feed.
By this time it was nearly 5:20 and time to look for the Dhole or Wild Dogs, and we found the family again, but they stayed up on the hill where they spent the afternoon. When they awoke, the peacocks and deer that had been feeding nearby erupted in a panic, with the deer running off and the peacocks slowly regaining their composure. Later, two different male Peacocks fanned and strutted, and Judy and I shot both still and videos of the displays.
Doris and Sue had a brief Leopard, getting just a few shots as it ran across the road, but one of our vehicles ended up with absolutely no highlights. I’m not surprised, because the vehicle in question stopped at the wild dogs, declared they were too far away and it was too dark, and drove off. It was indeed too far and too dark, but a minute later the dogs may have stood up and walked to the road, as they did so several times last year, but one wouldn’t know this if one doesn’t stay and see. Instead, with no highlights to that point, they passed on what could have been a great one. It turned out not to be, but the lesson here is patience, and without it the chances of success and a productive game drive, or even having a good time, is nil.
Tiger total, 18

Day 12, Park Two.

Just when I was thinking tigers had vanished from this park five of our six vehicles had some degree of encounter, in a most unexpected place. On the main road leading from the entrance to the breakfast central spot, a small earthen dam creates a small pond. Here, John and Don’s vehicle noticed tracks, and soon after, spotted the tiger in the grass. It walked across the dam, giving completely clear views, and four of our vehicles were there for it.
I was not. Earlier, most of us were at the Dhole or Wild Dogs shortly after dawn. The dogs hadn’t moved since last evening but one moved off, and our driver suggested we take another route to intercept. We did, with one dog squatting on the road, defecating. Shortly after it moved back into the center of the field, but we did have a few seconds of a crapping dog, and then luckily, the same dog trotting into the forest. Earlier, before we arrived, all six dogs were on the road, and later, at least one vehicle was there when the entire family crossed a different road and headed towards the river, where I’d seen them yesterday.
The other vehicles decided to head back towards the entrance, and encountered the tiger, while we headed deeper into the park. Along the elevated dike we spotted over 30 Barasinga deer scattered across the meadow and in the shallow pond. Some were playing, galloping about either alone or chasing each other, and the shooting was great. They were obviously playing. The more sedate deer had Black Drongos perched on their back, and Cattle Egrets feeding in front, waiting for insects to be kicked up by the deer.
We moved into the forest, finding fresh Leopard tracks, and Dell, the park naturalist, had this third leopard sighting in three days! We did well with a Jungle Owlet, and the best Shikra, the forest accipiter hawk, but there was no sign of tiger, either alarm calls or tracks. When we met Mary, near the breakfast spot, we learned of the tiger, and after breakfast we headed there.
John and Don, in the meantime, were just coming to breakfast, having it a second time after the other vehicles had gone. When we arrived at the spot a vehicle was pointing – the tiger was moving again. We parked near the dam, not knowing it had already crossed it once and hoping that it might, but distant alarm calls indicated it was moving downstream. We headed that way, but the route required us almost making three sides of a square or rectangle to arrive at the stream again, a good ten minutes later. We were too late.
I missed one of my dream shots, a tiger walking down a nyla or stream bed towards me. The tiger had already crossed, and in the distance, about 80 yards away, it was standing in the stream, sniffing a large tree. We screeched to a halt and I grabbed my 70-300, getting off a few shots as it walked around a bend and disappeared. In the excitement, I don’t know if I was zoomed to 300 or not, but the metadata will answer that later.
We moved up the road and more alarm calls indicated that the tiger was still moving. It recrossed the road, about 100 yards up from where we sat waiting, and the tiger crossed right next to the next vehicle up the road! We again missed it, by so little! One of the alarm calls was a quivering whistle-like note, loud, as if it was from a large bird, and indeed it was, as this is the alarm call of a peacock. I’d never heard this before, and it is quite different from the rahh-aahh call peacocks normally make. But knowing its source, I could hear the similarity – once the source was identified.
By 11:15 the tiger was settled, no alarm calls sounded, and we headed back to camp. Phil and I were happy that our wives did get the tiger, but I was disappointed that we missed a classic shot by such a little amount of time. Not that anything could have been changed: we waited by the dam hoping for a nice shot there, and had we raced off it was just as likely the tiger would have gone back to the dam and swam in front of everyone. You just never know.
PM. We were hoping for an exciting climax for our last game drive in this park but that didn’t happen. The afternoon game drive for everyone was slow. My vehicle spent a great deal of time circling the area where the tiger disappeared this morning, but except for two alarm calls, which may have been false alarms, the woods was silent.
For Phil and I, our highlights included a full-frame Crested Serpent Eagle perched along the dike, and two bull Barasinga deer that fed into the lake, in good light and fairly good reflections. Mary went with the camp manager and his son, a delightful boy who taught Mary a lot about the park, plants, and insects. Pretty impressive for a 7 year old.
My real highlight, however, was seeing one of our participants' tiger shots from our first park, where she had the male tiger lying in the water close to her vehicle, and the shots were simply incredible. I’ve been hoping to get a tiger in water, but I would not have even fantasied about getting the shots she had from that afternoon. Incredible.

Day 13, on to and at Park Three.

We left a few minutes early, and arriving without event at our third, and last, park of the main trip, at our lodge about a half hour before rooms were ready. The lodge had not followed the passenger rotation list that Mary had sent, and this resulted in Mary and I sharing a vehicle, rather than being with our participants, and some couples being split, because they didn’t look at the last names!
This park has the potential to be our favorite, with the great prey density of any of India’s main subcontinent parks – Kasaranga, in far eastern India may have more prey but there the vegetation is extremely dense and tiger spotting difficult. However, this is the most bureaucratic of all the parks, and two of our participants had received new passports since they registered for the trip, and provided passport information, so we had a real hassle of getting them in.
It was a pleasant change to have Mary and me together, but we felt our skills were wasted, not shared with others, and we’d be seeing the same things. The afternoon was fairly slow, although we did have some nice Sambar deer and Langur Monkeys, and although near the end of the day we had several alarm calls we had no cats. At one point we had a peacock calling in alarm, giving a ‘coo-coo-coo-coo’ call, and the deep, almost tiger-like roar that is the alarm call of a Sambar. Spotted deer give a higher pitched ‘whoo’ yelp-like call, quite unlike the deep roar they utter as a mating or rutting call. We heard them all, but no cats.

Day 14, Park Three.

The game drive was rather anticlimactic after a dawn drama with a difficult person, as we only heard alarm calls of sambar and deer. One of our vehicles had a brief look at a tiger but it was far away and partially obscured by brush. Three vehicles in front of our’s, after we heard alarm calls, a tiger crossed the road, but it happened about 5 minutes before we arrived.
We did have some nice langur monkeys backlighted as they ran through the grasses, a cooperative White-eyed Buzzard, and Doris got a very nice ghost tree, a white barked gum tree that generally stands out, like a spirit, from the darker forest. We returned to the lodge by 10:15, as the head began, and, as it is Wednesday, the park is closed for the afternoon, giving us a rest before our final day of the main safari and the four days of extension.

Day 14, Park Three.

It was another cold morning, but this morning we insisted on the blankets normally supplied for a morning game drive. While this lodge is one of the fanciest and highest rated for this area, they truly nickel-and-dime everything, and we can’t wait until next  year when our outfitter’s camp will be up and running. Which is the arrangement at our other Parks and lodges, and the difference is striking.
We had alarm calls shortly after entering the park, with a troop of Langur monkeys barking their alarms and facing into the forest. The tigress with five cubs lives in this area, but her cubs are 16 months old and often scatter, so any of the cats could be causing the alarm. In the distance another troop of monkeys started calling, and some spotted deer, but the sounds never came closer to the roads and we saw nothing. A mahout and his elephant passed by us and disappeared into the forest following the calls, and we hoped for a Tiger Show but none developed.
Our morning was productive nonetheless, with really nice portraits of a very young Sambar deer that walked near the road, crossed, and disappeared. We wonder if it was an orphan. Near the lake we had a large mixed flock of birds, with Flame-backed Woodpeckers, Tree-pies, and the noisy Seven Sisters, the Jungle Babblers that kicked up the leaf litter, making the forest floor seem alive.
Mary had the lodge naturalist with her, but as terrible as it sounds the park guide actually did a better job. Mary had spotted leopard tracks that they misidentified as a tigers, but later she spotted a brief glimpse of the leopard on the rocks. Another of our vehicles may have seen the leopard as well.
By 10AM the forest was quiet and the air was getting hot, and by 10:15 we were back in camp. One of our vehicles had real problems with their driver and guide, we learned, as the normal courtesy of setting out breakfast was left to them to dig out and arrange, and later, the two were tossed hard when the driver suddenly braked for a distant truck.
While this park has the potential to be our favorite, with its open teak forests and abundant game, the lodge and the Park management all make for a less than perfect  experience.
PM. Our last game drive in the park was rather anticlimactic, although our driver and guide did their best as we traveled sections of the park we’d not seen earlier, and arrived back at the gate almost at dark, and far past any shooting light. Still, it was a pleasant afternoon with Phil but a bit of a disappointment, as I hoped to end the main part of this trip with a great wrap up.
That evening the lodge provided a bonfire and snacks around the pool where we did our highlights and recap of the trip, although 8 of us are continuing, and four returning to Delhi for a flight home.

Day 15, Park Three to Park Four.

Mary and I were up early to see the four people off who would be leaving the trip, not doing the extension, and flying back to Delhi. Although we had confirmed three times, both from the lodge and via our Delhi outfitter, only four vehicles were waiting us, and three of those would be taking the group on to Park Four. The naturalist for the lodge, who was to help us get things going, was virtually useless as I tried to extract some information from the four sleepy drivers, who apparently had spent the night in their cars. We were under a deadline, as the four needed to get to the airport for their flight, and as I tried, fruitlessly, to have the naturalist make any sense of what they were saying, time was passing. Finally, we simply put all four into one vehicle, grabbed some cushions from the lodge as a make-shift seat for one of the passengers – the back was bucket seats, so we needed to place the fourth person between the two – and sent them on their way. About twenty-five minutes after the scheduled departure, and now 15 minutes or so after our four-person vehicle departed, the missing vehicle arrived! Again, getting concrete data as to who this person was, and where they were supposed to take passengers, took valuable minutes, again via the incompetent naturalist from the lodge to assist. Finally, we sent him chasing after the first vehicle, with instructions to catch up and get the extra passengers their ride.
This type of fiasco, and the frustrating incompetence and lack of action on the part of the lodge naturalist was what had kept us out of India for nearly 20 years. Back then, this was the norm, and it gave us chilling flashbacks as to the past. Apparently there was a major traffic tie-up preventing the driver from arriving on time, although I think that was merely an excuse, as the rest arrived the night before.

PM. We arrived at Park Four after 2PM, but the lodge had a great lunch waiting for us and, with a 30 minute break, we headed out for the afternoon game drive. Our fourth park is little visited, and only a maximum of 12 vehicles are in the park at any time. The afternoon went well, and Cindy and I, although we shot very little, heard a Leopard as it gave its sawing-coughing roar, and we saw one Malabar Giant Squirrel and two surprisingly tolerant Sloth Bears, a mother and year-old cub. The view of the bears was marginal, as the bears were in chest high grass and rarely looked up, and as they became more visible I switched to video to get something.
Two of our other vehicles, on different routes, did very well, with one vehicle virtually surrounded by a pack of Dhole, or Indian Wild Dogs. Mary got there in time for some shots, almost full-frame and sharp, although she was hand-holding a 500mm lens and shooting at 1/160th of a second! She also had a great squirrel, mating Open-billed Storks, and some nice Spotted Deer reflections. Our fourth vehicle had, like me, a fairly unproductive photo afternoon, but everyone loved the park, the forest, the lack of mind-numbing bureaucracy and the game they saw.
We were, we discovered, a week too late for a real sight: a Tiger had killed an adult Gaur, or Indian Bison, and had been feeding on it for nearly five days, pretty much in the open. However even here pointless bureaucracy raises its pointed head, as the forestry department on the 5th day closed the access road to this sight, deciding too many vehicles were going to the tiger. The tiger, apparently, was unfazed by the vehicles but the ‘powers’ decided that the tourists, visiting this relatively new tiger park, shouldn’t see tigers! The lodge staff can make no sense of the decision but laughingly explained that by the time they closed that road the tiger had finished with the kill. Now, however, that road was closed and no one knows how long it will remain closed, despite the fact that the tiger was now long gone.

Day 15, Park Four.

We left early, around 5:45, and crossed the lake to the park headquarters in the quarter light of predawn. Landing and leaving the dock, by the time we reached the top of the hill where the vehicles park we had enough light to see easily, although it was still too dark for any photography. Shortly after 6 we headed into the park, and almost immediately a Sloth Bear was spotted. Like last night’s, this one seemed unconcerned but fed in its slow, methodical fashion further away from the road, eventually disappearing amongst the trees.
Later Mary had yesterday’s mother Sloth Bear and cub in clear view on the road, but either her driver or her rather arrogant park guide decided to speed in close, and of course the bear ran off, spoiling what could have been a great shot. Mary had some nice luck with a bull Sambar deer, a Savannah Nightjar, and a close-up of a Wooly-necked Stork.
I was with John, and our morning was a bit tamer. We did have fairly adequate views of two Malabar Giant Squirrels high in a tree, with one dangling by its hind legs as it munched upon the nuts of the tree. The branches were thin, and it was somewhat amazing that the tiny twigs supported its weight.
Several Gaur passed through the forest, somewhat and surprisingly skittish, although one big bull lumbered by and walked parallel to the road, offering some nice jungle shots. Wild Dog tracks were everywhere, and we encountered Leopard tracks twice, but no one saw either. Towards the end of the day we had an enthusiastic Langur giving its alarm bark, and although we circled the area the leopard or jungle cat stayed hidden in the high grasses. By 10AM the furnace was definitely turned on, but because of the alarm calls we didn’t reach HQ until nearly 11, where we caught the last boat returning to camp.
PM.
Lunch was a great conversation and spectacular food where everyone, especially me, over-ate and suffered for it! The talk, however, was informative. I asked our host why, in virtually every park I’ve been to, tiger hunting seems restricted to either one, seeing a tiger on the road, two, following pug marks leading to a tiger, or three, listening and following alarm calls, waiting for a tiger to appear or driving to it. No one, virtually ever, stops  at a nyala or ravine, or a stream bed, and looks back into these areas, except as they drive passed. I pointed out that in Africa we often find elusive game because we sit and glass for it, sometimes spotting a tail or ear or spots. Here, if it isn’t active, and thus the drivers/guides reactive, tigers virtually go unseen.
Our host conceded the point, explaining that tiger tourism is still in its infancy, although tiger tourism has been existence for several decades. More like it, he believed, this is just how they’ve been trained, and that’s what they do, and rarely does anyone think outside the box. Perhaps there is pressure from tourists, but I think all tourists would consent to a few minutes at likely spots where guides could thoroughly check out an area. He proposed they might do that, and I suggested that such a test would really require months, with some doing this method, and some not, to determine effectiveness. Somehow, I suspect this will never be done.
The conversation turned to poaching, and how our host had, in Peking, China, walked down an extremely affluent street where a ‘low end’ car was a Mercedes, and everything else was upscale from there! In the middle of this expensive hunk of real estate was a Chinese Traditional Medicine store, and he wondered how a story like that could compete in an auto zone. Obviously, traditional medicines can be big business!
I mentioned that in a recent pro-Republican book on the environment, entitled something like The Inconvenient Truths, 7 environmental disasters liberals don’t want you to know, tiger farming was addressed. In that book, the author quoted various authorities who argued for tiger farming, where farm-raised tigers could then be ‘harvested’ or slaughtered for their parts, thus supplying the traditional medicine market. His argument was, if commercial product was available, and thus those captive, farmed tigers had value, wild tigers, requiring far more work to acquire, and intrinsically with no value, would thus be spared.
Like many tiger authors whom I’ve read, our host and the naturalists at the table vehemently disagreed with that premise. For one, wild tigers are thought to be more potent, so even if farm raised tiger products were available, there would be a bigger demand for ‘the real thing.’ Further, there would be no real way to monitor where these products came from – were the tiger hides, or penises, or gall bladders, from a captive raised, or from a wild tiger? How could that be checked. They felt that this would completely open the door to corruption and exploitation and, instead of insuring the tigers survival, as argued in that book, it would in fact speedily doom the wild tigers.
This is essentially the same argument that divides the two camps for elephants and their ivory. In southern Africa elephants are often abundant, or too abundant and destroying habitat, and there are millions of dollars of collected ivory (from natural deaths or from culling) already in warehouses. In East Africa, and indeed through most of the elephants’ range, elephants are declining, and, once again, if ivory were for sale, it would be easily, or at least quite possible, for poached ivory from these other countries to be smuggled out, or smuggled into countries with legal elephant ivory trade. While there may be measures that might work for ivory, explored at length in the excellent book, Ivory Ghosts, virtually no conservationist feels this would work for tigers. Lunch went a long time, and was quite enjoyable.
John and I were again the last to return to camp, reaching the dock as our wives motored off into the thickening gloom, never glancing back at our despondent waving! The afternoon was reasonably slow, although we had a fairly good sequence with a Malabar Giant Squirrel directly overhead, requiring us to lay on the seats with our 500mm and shoot nearly straight up. Hopefully, something from this will be sharp. We also managed to catch one sequence as a squirrel leaped from branch to branch, catching it in mid-flight.
The highlight of the afternoon was coming upon a mahout and his elephant, where the mahout, or more likely his trainee, bathed and scrubbed the hide of the elephant and, using sand, polished its ivory and the area near its gum-line. Later, Mary’s vehicle came upon the scene just after the elephant was finished bathing, but just as a mother elephant and baby came to the stream to drink and bath. Great shots.
As the light grew more angular we did a lot of shooting with Langur Monkeys framed against dark foliage or against a pond, or, for some, front-lighted shots as they monkeys drank.

Day 16, Park Four.

Four people, Doris, Cindy, Don, and Judy, did an elephant safari this morning, having not had the chance on the main trip as there were no tiger shows. They loved it, and saw and photographed Gaur and Sambar.
John and I again teamed up, and Mary was with Sue, and we had a productive morning. It started with very serious alarm calls from a Sambar and from Langurs, and we suspected there was a tiger about. It never showed, and after 45 minutes of searching we moved on.
John and I did well with Giant Squirrels, and I blew a great opportunity of a squirrel leaping an easy 12 feet across an expanse of blue, directly overhead. I missed the first squirrel that jumped, but I had ample time for the second, but I failed to reset my shutter speed for action, as minutes earlier I’d shot a landscape at a slow speed. The result, none of the shots were sharp! Two squirrels had been chasing each other about, in a territorial dispute I believe, and we had several chances for running and one good sequence where a squirrel paused in good light for some portraits.
At the end of the morning we encountered another pack of Dhole or Wild Dogs, but they were shy, and although between us we saw as many as eight, no one had shots. I managed to see two of the dogs as they ran across the road.
PM. As a change of pace everyone did the boat cruise for the afternoon ‘game drive’ and everyone loved it. We left at 4, after the crushing heat of the day, and headed east with the sun to our backs. River Terns were common, and a few Little Terns, perhaps the same species as our Least Tern in the US and, if not, a virtual twin, flew by. Mary used my 70-300 with a 7D, giving her 480mm and a fast IS lens, and she did extremely well. I used our 400 F5.6 which is sharp, fast, and light, but without IS, although the shutter speeds were fast and the lack of IS was not a problem. In all, we photographed a lot of birds – Great and Intermediate Egrets, Great Cormorants, Pied and Common Kingfishers, Stilts, and Wooly-necked Storks.
The afternoon highlight was probably the tame Pied Kingfishers that exchanged a fish on a nearby drowned tree, and flew about us several times, offering wonderful action and flight shots.

Day 17, Park Four.

Our last morning game drive and a fairly slow one at that. We had a large herd of Gaur, and both Mary and I tried ‘exploding’ gaur by rapidly zooming out at a slow shutter speed. Nothing I shot worked, but perhaps Mary was a bit luckier. Some vehicles had some luck with Giant Squirrels, and, as we returned to HQ we heard enthusiastic alarm calls of Langurs, which we presume was for a Leopard that we failed to see. Our driver and Park guide did a great job, taking us on roads we hadn’t been before, including one technically closed that covered wonderful landscape, and we circled long and widely for the leopard, although without success.
PM. Our last afternoon, and one of the best. Judy and Cindy did a canoe safari, getting close to several shorebirds and seeing the Skimmers they were hoping to see. Skimmers are related to terns but most are dark-backed, and all species are characterized by a long lower bill that extends an inch or more beyond the upper. With this, a skimmer literally skims the water, dragging the lower bill like a scythe just at the surface, hoping to snag anything floating along the top. Should the bill hit break, the bird jerks its head back, pulling the fish cross-wise deeper into the bill. Skimmers fly with a distinctive half-flapping motion, as the wingtips can’t extend below the body line. Should they, the wings would hit the water and impede its flight.
John and I went out in the jeep, and we had the best game drive I’ve had in this park this year.  We started with a herd of Gaur quite close to the road, so close that one lying down barely fit within the frame at 70mm. Several blond gaurs, the odd color pattern common only to here,  Eventually the gaur lost their nerve and bolted, running a short distance into the forest before settling down to graze.
In the broad, close-cropped pasture that parallels the now dry river course another large herd of gaur were grazing. As we approached, a Rhesus Macaque crossed the trail and stopped in the short grasses, giving me only the second shooting opportunity on the entire trip to photograph one of these monkeys. It moved off, and stopped again near the forest, and once again showed no interest as we pulled up with our vehicle to resume shooting.
Meanwhile, the gaur steadily grazed closer, eventually passing quite close to our vehicle. Initially we’d spotted in the distance a few calves but they moved back into the forest. Subadults, both blond and traditionally colored, approached closely, and John tried some manual exposure experimentation. Shooting different toned subjects in a real-time situation isn’t the best place to try a new method, but he managed ok.
We continued, and about two ridges from where we’d suspected the morning leopard we heard monkey alarm barks. We  raced along, trying to follow the source of the calls, and eventually we arrived within a few hundred meters of the same spot. Our park guide spotted a cat, and from the size of it he was sure it was a tiger. It was further out than I was scanning, and he actually cuffed me on the back of the head to direct me, basically signaling ‘look out further, you dummy!’ I spotted it then, and with my lens saw spots – it was a huge male leopard. The light was failing and the cat offered very limited shooting windows, and with auto-focus each time the cat appeared my lens locked on the trees and brush in front. After two or three misses I switched to manual focus, and since I only had one Wimberley module one mounted (having removed my usual two for cross-bracing, since slipping the lens on a monopod was difficult with two) balance was an issue. Still, I managed a couple of shots, including a profile, front-view, and quartering away shot. Nothing stellar, but a leopard nonetheless and in focus and exposed.
Light was dropping but we heard a Sloth Bear was spotted and we hurried to that spot, finding the bear standing motionless, its head, as usual, aimed at the ground and basically out of sight. I shot a couple of images to check focus and exposure, but when it moved it simply ambled off, giving a black blob of a butt for the only view, and not worth a pixel.
Still, it was a great afternoon drive, with leopard, sloth bear, gaur, red-wattled lapwings, and Rhesus macaque monkeys, and a great conclusion to the trip.
That evening, we did a slide show (via computer, of course) of selected images of everyone’s shots, a show of over 350 images. Some spectacular tiger shots, including great portraits, ground-level views, and a great scent-marking sequence where the urine is blasting like a jet onto a tree.
The trip drew to a close with a great, close-knit crew for our final days, giving us a refreshing break and it was sad to have to say goodbye.

Day 18.

The group arrived in Delhi safely, and our outfitter and his wife, and Mary and I drove on to the first park, where we’d have two days on our own before meeting the group. On the way in, just like last trip, we saw a tiger! This one was lying near the main road beneath a bamboo clump, and I had my field vision tested spotted the striped flank between the grasses and bamboo. It was barely 50 feet off the road, and some Indians were actually on foot, approaching to within 30 feet or so. The tiger couldn’t care less, raised its head once, and fell back to lying down. A nice start!
Earlier, right after breakfast, the manager of our lodge at Park Four took me around the 45 acre property. I had no idea the habitat was as promising, and I kicked myself for wasting time on star trails and not setting up my Range IR at any of the numerous game trails or at the waterhole. We saw tracks of civet, boar, and deer, and that was just in the few soft sandy spots. Next year, I know I’ll be running several setups here, and I’ll recommend that those doing this extension invest in a Range IR as well for some exciting remote shooting. Two different species of small wild cat frequent the property, and occasionally a leopard, so who knows what we might shoot! Pretty exciting, and I just wish that we were doing another extension this year to return and try out the Range IR I brought along.

Mary and I and our Indian outfitter and his wife drove from the Park to our First Park where we'd have a two day hiatus before the next group would arrive. Our trip went uneventfully until the end, where we found a Tiger lying beside the road. Our gear was packed, and it wasn't a photo, but what was noteworthy was that in additional to the several vehicles parked and watching, some Indians had climbed out of their car and had approached to within about 40 feet of the cat. It raised its head, looked, and flopped back down to sleep. We hoped this would be a great omen!

 

For more images and to have an idea about these wonderful photo tours, see our trip reports for 2011 as well, either Trip One or Trip Two.