Sighting the big cat on foot
March 22nd 2007 We started our walk in the morning at around 7 am to the fort situated on the top of bandhavgarh hill. My guests were a couple of professional photographers and we had a park guide from the forest department with us. The climb to the fort is around 45 minutes walk from shesh shaya which is the reclining statue of lord Vishnu, though it is a steep climb but such a beautiful climb that one hardly gets tired. Once we were on the hill we visited the temple and saw the other statues of various incarnations of lord Vishnu. The top of the hill is a flat tableland on which there are many man made lakes, so after a hearty breakfast sitting near the temple we decided to move on to see the other lakes. While we were having breakfast I had a quick word with the priest who stays up there and he told me that three tigers are in that vicinity and that he saw them a couple of days ago. I told my guest about it and they were excited, as we moved forward we saw some tiger scat and old pugmarks that confirmed there presence in the vicinity and soon as we were approaching a lake our park guide who was a new boy in the field of guiding stopped and turned around shouting tiger! tiger! I caught hold of him and told him not to move as I looked I saw two tigers lying in front of us in the lake water, they were around 75 yards from us, one was looking straight at us and the other had not noticed our presence yet, I showed the tigers to my guests and told them not to make much movement because that might disturb the tigers and cause them to flee away, but our guide who was nervous on seeing the tigers turned around to flee and the sudden movement was seen by the tigers and they immediately got up from the water and ran down into the valley. We all were thrilled with such a great sighting of tigers on foot, which is indeed a very rare sight, and in fact it was for the first time that I had seen tigers on foot. But we still didn’t want it to get over and to push our luck more we sat down near the lake in hiding hoping for the tigers to come back in the water because it was already 11 am and it was quite a hot day. But nature had shown us enough and even though we waited for another hour we didn’t get to see them again.
Himanshu Rathore
(Naturalist Mahua Kothi)

Leopards Mating: -
Pench has always been a good place to look for the more illusive big cat the leopard, there is a healthy population of leopards in most of the national parks in central India but out of all these parks pench is the best place to look for it. The main reason for more leopard sightings in pench is that the tiger population here is not as high as bandhavgarh or kanha and that gives the leopard more freedom to roam around freely.
It was an early morning in the beginning of February, we were driving on the hilly jodamunara road inside the pench national park, I was driving and had decided to take this road because there were good leopard sightings happening on this road. We were a big group of naturalists in our vehicle including seth who had just come down from phinda south Africa. As we were driving on the curvy road studded with big rock boulders, we came to a turning where our park guide pointed to a rock and said leopard and I immediately noticed the movement on the rock , I slowly rolled the vehicle and stopped it at a comfortable distance from the predator who was sitting impressively on top of a big rock boulder.
We noticed that this leopard was bleeding on the face, just over where the whiskers are. After a minute or two we noticed that there was another leopard which was looking at us from behind the rock, this one looked shy and smaller than the one sitting on the rock which was calm and least bothered by our presence. The smaller leopard was a female and soon enough we realized that they were courting. Seth who was the most experienced amongst us was the first to notice, soon we heard the male leopard, which was on the rock “sawing”. Within a few seconds the female too came up on the rock with her eyes fixed on us, we were excited about what was going to happen and we soon saw what we were hoping to see, we saw these leopards mate which is a rare sight to find in the Indian jungles.
This courtship and mating lasted for around 30 minutes, the female used to come on the rock and then disappear behind it again; this female looked like a very young one and it was probably her first mating. The male leopard was big and looked like a dominant male, the blood on its face could have been due to two reasons either while in the courtship the female had injured him or it was a fight with another male leopard.
What we had witnessed was something spectacular and now I am hoping to see this female with her new cubs.
Himanshu Rathore
(Naturalist Baghvan Pench)

after the yawn hehe

Another yawning tiger!

The same chorbehra cub doesn't look so innocent here

Quite an innocent look but looks could be deceptive this is the chorbehra cub

Tiger in black and white looks good sometimes the next two will prove the point better

oh up from the nice rock bed

Resting on the rocks!! also giving a good view of the paw

The limping dominant male tiger(B2) he has an injury in the right paw

Injured Dominant male tiger of bandhavgarh(B2) Licking his wounded paw!! licking helps the healing process... this guy has been limping for quite a few days now probably he had a territorial fight with another male tiger.

Getting some afternoon rest

Just got up after a good afternoon sleep

Muntjac (barking deer) the most shy and nervous creatures I have ever seen in the jungle

Jungle cat its really hard to find one specially posing like this

Busy cleaning his paw

approaching the road with eyes fixed on the spotted deer kill across the road

She is the Chorbehra female, how i know that is every tiger has a different stripe pattern and she has a prominant "B" marking behind her whiskers on the left side can you notice?

The king of all the vultures king vulture(red headed vulture) vultures are a threatened species in india

The crested serpent eagle

The brown shrike

Eyes of the devil!