In the pursuit of wildlife, fantasy is a constant companion. With ambition as its close ally, the mind goes about weaving dreams at every corner, and causes the heart to wistfully sigh when they don’t come true. One such long-nursed dream was to see a tiger at Kinarwah, the manmade waterhole at the fringe…
Tag: TALES
The Ultimate Cat: A Reprise
When the golden rays shied from the dark alleys, the breeze ceased and the air stood still not to carry his scent, when his brethren remained mute and wouldn’t tell of the fire moving through the forest, my Ultimate Cat sang a silent reprise, and the dawn broke into raptures. Kanha Tiger Reserve, November 2013…
Late-Morning Action
My friends have a most profound distaste for the road that runs precipitously down from Vulture Nest to Ghodademon Junction. I’ve always loved it for the sense of adventure and anticipation it evokes but my friends find it too bumpy for their hips, so they’d rather spare themselves the teeth-clattering ride for all the obscure…
The Bold New Face of Banbehi
It was late in the morning. The sun, having long since gained a firm foothold in the sky, climbed to dizzying heights. The ground, warmed by his telling ascent, baked the living hopes of the visitors into thin air, leaving only the most tenacious ones behind, who, including us, patiently pursued a change of…
What The Wind Brought: Two Cheetahs, an Impala and a Hyena
The month of June was wet in the Masai Mara Game Reserve but the morning was clear and invigorating. Comely gazelles grazed gracefully in the expanse and goshawks preened on sun-kissed tree-branches. The wind was only a gentle zephyr wrapped around a caressing silence.Then the radio crackled to the news of a cheetah near the…
Not A ‘Dry’ Morning
Optimism hadn’t paid often. And I say if optimism doesn’t pay, try persistence. If persistence doesn’t pay, try change. And if change doesn’t work, just listen to your heart, which you should have done in the first place! So we listened to our hearts and with a sense of guarded enthusiasm, boarded the safari vehicle…
A Serendipitous Encounter
It wasn’t as though I was blinded by a bout of muscae volitantes but surely, blessed as it is with supreme camouflage, a leopard doesn’t exactly stick out like a red flag from thick vegetation in dying light, especially when you are in the driver’s seat having to concentrate on the road ahead. So…
Cry Baby
On 24 April 2011, evidence was presented that the only thing big about an adolescent male tiger is his body. Deep inside, he’s still a toddler, really. A little after half past five, M2, another handsome product of the Mirchahni School of Superstardom, crossed over to the grassland from the woods of Andhiyari. We thought…
Portfolio of a Princess
A Green-Carpet Welcome: When all hope was lost and chances seemed thinner than a shoestring, against all odds emerged from the woods this precocious girl of incredible audacity, crossed between a crowd of vehicles and walked out into the open where an exalted crowd of stunned onlookers gave her a rapturous green-carpet welcome on the…
Venus and Adonis
Even as Bamera was showing himself off as pictured and depicted in the previous post we realised that Kankati too was nearby. Shortly, prompted by a sun who was increasingly asserting himself, Bamera moved to sit down in a shaded area and thinking this to be a spot conducive to romance, Kankati moved in before him,…
Finding Adonis
In the dead of the night great orange visions formed in the mind that I couldn’t but shrug off. A big handsome bloke filled the scene and stole the show. He had stocky arms, a trunk-like neck and a great mane for his kind. Withal, he seemed to have invoked the pause button, for this…
The Last Hurrah
The afternoon of 14 May 2010 remains one of the red-letter days in my diaries, not only because of the utterly spellbinding time we had with Auntie and her cubs, but also because we were beneficiaries of one of the greatest humanitarian acts that must ever have taken place in a tiger forest. We were…
Singing Her Own Requiem
“Cometh the hour, cometh the friend” should be revised the saying. The grounds for such a demand arise from the timely receipt of benevolence from Harshad Barve when we were driving from the Jhurjhura dam to Rajbehra on the fateful afternoon of 15 May. Having checked the Jhurjhura dam and found it to be free…
A Friend Called Banno
She sits on a rock gazing into the hollow, and in her eyes flashes the story of not one but two lives. A true survivor herself, she hails from a place where her sisters’ voices once resounded in the marshy meadows, but in the now quiet grasses she remains restfully as of the type whom the…
TIGGA TALES 