HIMANSHU & DEEPTI'S HOMESTAY - JAIPUR | IndianHomeStays.org

HIMANSHU & DEEPTI'S HOMESTAY - JAIPUR | IndianHomeStays.org

Tiger's Aunt

Seeing a jungle cat in good light is a rare sight, even though they are fairly common seeing one in the wild is difficult as they prefer to stay in the dry grasslands where they get ample cover to hide and hunt ground birds and rodents! In fact they camouflage so well some times that its almost impossible to locate them even if we have seen them enter some area where there is dry grass. In this particular sighting this jungle cat walked boldly across the road and then walked along our jeep for five minutes, before it entered a patch of dry grass and even though I could see the grass moving I could barely see the cat! reminded me of a scene from the movie Ghost and the darkness where the lions are moving in the grassland and all we could see was the grass moving.

Return to blogging after a long break

Its been a long break! I have not updated my blog for the past two years but now I have decided to start blogging again, so look out for some of my amateur photography work with which I will keep you all updated via this blog.

hada and me with seth

We had a great time at phinda, and two people made it special for us seth and graham. seth was always around with us and he made us do a lot of activities walking rhinos,lions, buffaloes, night drives, game capture and a lot more! here in this pic he is standing in a hole dug out by an aardvark!

28th morning we left for Johannesburg with graham it was a long journey but an interesting one as graham gave full information about the different areas and the culture etc. As we reached Johannesburg graham took us to his sister’s house where graham had arranged our stay, we were given a warm welcome by graham’s sister and his nieces and nephew, we quickly changed as we had to be out for dinner with Geoff and Chris who were waiting for us at a sea food restaurant

· 27th the day began late for us as after eating breakfast we went to pick Seth up and as he had some office work we were with him and graham at the office for quite some time, graham too got free and decided to come on game drive with us so together we went to an area where three lions a male and two females were seen earlier in the morning. On the way we did a lot of birding and graham who was driving also took us to the place where the trainees are made to stay in the jungle and where the rifle training is done. We reached the area and drove off road to look for the lions where we saw some tracks so graham got down and started following the tracks he was back in a while with no success. So Seth said we will all walk together and look for the tracks and then he said the golden words “guys whatever you do don’t run” (cats like tigers leopards and lions usually mock charge when they see us but if we try to run then they will usually go for us) as we walked we started getting tracks and Seth was leading us showing us the tracks and then suddenly Seth and hada stopped and pointed at a bush where I saw a male lion walk past away from us but just 20 yards from us we all kept still and slowly backed off but now the problem was that these lions were between us and vehicle!! So we quickly took a circle and got back to the vehicle, it was an amazing experience to see lions on foot!! Then those lions came out and sat in the open where we got a lot of pictures. We told graham and Seth that what a perfect ending it was to our trip but Seth said well there is more to come and sure there was! We went back to the lodge and quickly got ready to go on felicity’s assessment drive, the drive going at an easy pace until all the action started happening as we arrived at the grassland we saw some buffalo in the distance and some impala pronking, we were looking at the impalas running when Tina suddenly said lions oh they are chasing and they have got the niyala I was totally lost until I removed my binos and looked closer to us where a lioness was killing a female niyala antelope oh what a site it was, we both got a lot photos as these lionesses were feasting on the antelope. We were all so excited with seeing the action and we celebrated it with a couple of drinks after which we began the night drive and as we began the night drive we saw a leopard straight in front of us on the road and then it came and sat right close to our vehicle, and for 10 mins it was just there! It was like an icing on the cake for us and then we got back packed our stuff and celebrated with a party!

26th morning Seth had his cycle race so we joined Walter and his guest for a game drive and we had a good sighting of two lionesses trying to hunt so we go some very nice pictures. Afternoon we went to Phillip to know the plan so he gave me the keys of a land cruiser and told me to drive to Seth’s home we reached Seth’s home which is around 10kms from forest lodge where we were living, Seth was ready and waiting for us. He took us to a rocky area to look for rock hyrax and we did see two of them after this we picked up the telemetric device from Seth’s house and came to the north side of the forest looking for leopard. We got signals of a female leopard from deep in the bush and Seth kept driving deeper in the bush not bothering about the spiky trees. But we did not find the leopard and then we came out on the road again tried checking for her on the other side and then I saw it cross the road! It was a brief sighting but a wonderful one. Seth told us to drop him back at his home and on the way we were spotting with the light and we saw side striped jackal, scheon buck and genet.