25th morning Seth took us to an area to look for three male lions and after working hard for quite some time we did find them and got some good photos, but what we did after this I will remember for lifetime! We went out to help with game capture and here we saw how they catch antelopes using a helicopter to push them towards an area where there are nets and people waiting to grab them it was just awesome. We also got to do game capture we helped the people to catch some reed bucks and get them back to the cages. Here in Africa its normal to buy and sell game, so game capture and release is on all the time. We got back from the game capture and went straight to Seth’s house where we cooked some Indian food tandoori chicken and smoked chicken we enjoyed a good Indian meal.

· 24th morning Seth was here to pick us up at 8 am, he took us out to another national park which is called the hluhluwe game reserve, it was a beautiful forest though not as good as phinda but a good change. After seeing the reserve and having lunch at kfc we came back to phinda and took a drive in the south side of phinda looking for cheetahs, here we went to an area where there was a hilly terrain and there was a steep road with lots of rocks and bolders on it and this when I noticed the amazing power of a land cruiser! In low range 4X4 second gear the vehicle climbed the entire hill without Seth touching the accelerator! Anyways after this we came back to lowlands and we had two different amazing cheetah sightings in one of the sightings a female cheetah was on a tree! And we both took hundreds of pictures. We came back had dinner and called it a night as we were too tired after a long day.

· 23rd July we went out for walking in the bush with Seth and some other rangers and as we started our second walk, one of the rangers looked through is binoculars and said oh well I can see a lion! Far down around 300 meters away on the wall of the dam we saw 3 female lions sitting these were the same lionesses which we had seen earlier so got on the vehicle and got close to them to get some pictures. While coming back we came across a big male elephant that was walking behind our vehicle and it was wonderful to see this huge creature. The afternoon was very windy and cold but Seth arrived at around 2.30 pm with his telemeter device and antenna he told us that we will go looking for leopards and so we did and at around 3pm we had seen our first leopard of the day a female sitting on a termite mound well hidden in the bush, Seth said that she is quite shy and might move away and after giving us a good view of around 2 mins she moved away. From here we went at the dam where the three lionesses were sitting on the wall in great light so we took lot of pictures of them as they were in a great light. After this Seth told us that we must move as there are very good chances of finding a male leopard in another area and as we arrived in that area and switched on the antenna we heard the beeping and Seth said to keep a look out as the leopard was very close and as he said this we saw the leopard appear from behind the bushes looking straight at our vehicle so I started taking some pictures and then this leopard crossed the road right in front of us at a lightning speed and moved into the forest on the other side we tried to follow it for a few more minutes and did get some glimpses but the we had already seen the best of it so we moved on to head for the lodge but on our way we encountered a herd of elephants walking on the road in front of us one which was a bull in mast so we waited for them to move off for a long time, as they went in a little inside the bush we quickly speeded past the area. The evening wasn’t over for us yet we were requested by the rangers to join them for meeting the trainee rangers on the boat night where we had a great time with the rangers.

· 22nd July was an early start as graham and Seth were at rock lodge to pick us up very early at 5 am we left for sodwana bay beach which is one of the top surfing destinations in the world. We reached there in two hours and the seen out there was magnificent there are very large forested sand dunes very close to the beach and the beach itself is the cleanest beach I have ever come across we had plans to go snorkelling but since it was very cold we decided against it but we had a lovely time seeing the view of the beautiful beach and walking by the side of it specially on the rocks where there were pools of water and we could see some creatures from the sea, then we went on a high point from where we saw another lifer mammal i.e. the hump back whales!!! There were at least 5 of them and we could see them very clearly with our binoculars. After having a good time at the beach we got back and went on the assessment drive for one of the ranger felicity where we saw a herd of elephants in the water! And a lot white rhinos as well.

· 21st july Seth was on time to pick us up and take us out to Richards bay the closest town from phinda so we had a lovely day out at the mall in Richards bay and did a lot of shopping. In the evening when we got back we went to mountain lodge where we gave presentation to the staff lodge regarding, India, lodges and tigers of our jungles.

· 20th July Seth was here early to pick us up and take us out for tracking rhinos on foot so when we went out we saw tracks on the road from the jeep while driving we followed the fresh tracks and found three rhinos very close from where we were but just a little hidden by the bushes so Seth got down and asked us to follow him without making any noise at all so we followed him and reached as close as 25 feet from the rhinos as the wind was in our favour, there were three white rhinos two adults and a young one we had a good look at them before they sensed us and moved off. We went ahead in the jeep and looked for some more tracks and soon we found fresh tracks of rhinos going into the bushes, Seth got down and asked us to follow the tracks he told us that he will help us where ever we went wrong so myself and hada set out to follow rhino tracks soon we got to a bush where we saw a medium sized python move quickly into the bush, Garrith was also with us and he tried to catch this snake and suddenly we saw garrith jump and when we went ahead to see what surprised him we saw a huge African rock python in the same bush sitting all curled up and still cold, this was actually the female python which is generally bigger than the male it was atleast 4 or 5 meters long and very thick we got some pictures of her and then we moved on again to look for the rhinos. The bush was getting thicker and there were many thorny trees in our way but we were still getting fresh tracks of rhinos with Seth’s help but then for a few meters we did not get any tracks till I found one in the thickets as I told everyone about this track and as I looked up I saw the rhinos just in front of us about 50 yards away which garrith had spotted just seconds before I saw. It was very exciting to be able to find the rhinos by tracking them here we saw 4 white rhinos, we tried to get closer to them but they moved away as they heard us coming their way though we did manage some photos. After this exciting walking experience we got back to the lodge and Seth then took us out for some rifle shooting where we fired 375 magnum and as we came back he told us to pack our bags as we were moving to guest rooms in one of phinda’s finest lodge the rock lodge which is situated in the south of the jungle, at rock lodge we were welcomed and checked into the guest rooms which were magnificent and great views from the room, the courtyard overlooked the forest and in the courtyard there was a beautiful plunge pool! After settling down we went out on a game drive with Giles the head ranger of the lodge and Craig who is a trainee ranger our expectation was to see cheetahs and we did see cheetahs that too a mother with three cubs on a zebra foal kill, it was just wonderful to see the cats with the teary eyes write in front of us and we took a lot of photos. On the way back i used the spotlight and this time we saw a spotted hyena! As we got back to the lodge we met graham he was there to join us for dinner, so we chatted with graham till late night and spoke to him on various topics.

· 19th July morning began with some cold weather and on the drive initially we did not see much but then we stumbled across a big black rhino which was an amazing sight we both took a lot pictures. When we came back we were told that Seth will be at lodge to take us out, soon he was there and he told us to get ready quickly as we were going out to track some radio collared leopards and see lot more of the forest we were out soon looking for a female leopard of which we did not get any signals on the radio device so we went ahead to look for some lions and soon we came across three female lions sitting on a mound in the middle of a grassland so we went off road and parked right next to them and took loads of pictures it was a wonderful sight specially because they were all up and active, it was great fun being out with Seth and Seth also gave us a lot of information about various things including the ongoing leopard project at phinda, after the lions we again went down to look for another radio collared leopard a female with two small cubs who is apparently very shy, on our way to this area we had some great sightings of giraffes and cape buffaloes. When we reached the area and Seth turned on the device the antenna started catching signals of the leopard so we went deep in the bush to look for it we kept getting closer and closer to it and it was amazingly exciting, we got as close as 20 feet to this leopard and we could even hear it moving but could not see it as it was thick bush and there was no approach to this area. Soon it was dark and we had the spotlight on Seth offered me to use the spotlight and I was happy to do so, as we started with the drive we saw a porcupine which was just crossing the road, then I spotted three different janets which looked like miniature leopards it was exciting to spot them, after this great night drive Seth dropped us back to the lodge and gave some pints of chilled beer.