April 25th, 2009

This trip was initiated by Mr. M.N Jayakumar. We had planned to drive to Sunkadkatte for 2 nights & BR Hills for 2 nights.

I convinced Sudhir Shivarm, fellow photographer to join me for the first leg of the trip. Mr. Jayakumar & myself drove from Bangalore & reached Sunkadkatte on the 24th. Sudhir joined us there at the later half of the day.

During our evening safari, I teased Sudhir about sighting a Tiger or Leopard since his cat luck till this trip was bad. The evening drive gave us good opportunity to photograph elephants & was adventurous for the fact it rained & we had to negotiate slush in the jungle.

The 25th morning we left early to do a boat ride in Kabini. We were able to shoot lot of birds on the boat ride highlights being Osperey, Grey Headed Fish Eagle.

We reached our end point of the boat ride near Naihalla FRH, we turned around to the Mastigudi point. On the way back we stopped the boat to photograph the Grey Headed Fish Eagle, we had just finished shooting & were busy looking at our camera LCD when our boat man whispered "Sir Tiger". We couldn't believe our eyes, about 25ft from us was this huge male, lying in the water, cooling itself. It didn't look at us for a while & then turned staring straight at us.

It then got up & started walking towards the forest edge, stopped to look at us & disappeared into the jungle. Well Sudhir was almost jumping with joy in the boat. It was around 9:30am & we had left without breakfast & decided to go back to the guest house, grab a quick bite & come back to try our luck with this Tiger. Tigers are know to cool themselves during peak summer in water.

We got off the boat at Mastigudi & were driving towards Sunkadkatte. We had just entered Sigur road when we heard Sambar alarm calls. We stopped for a while scanning the area. Nothing much happened for the next 10min. We reversed the vehicle & waited for few more minutes, Mr. Jayakumar spotted a Leopard sitting inside a bush close to us. We waited for a while for the Leopard to come out, after a while it walked out to the open looked at us for a while & vanished.

A Tiger & Leopard within 45min ah.. amazing. We continued to Sunkadkatte for out brunch. After a quick meal we headed off to the Jungle at around 1:30. As soon as we hit the back waters we saw a group of around 30 vultures (Longbilled & White rumped) feasting on a Spotted Deer caracas in water. We approached it with caution & went pretty close to the group. The next 45min went photographing the Vultures.

We then decided to drive to the point where we had seen the Tiger during our boat ride. We were driving along the banks when Mr. Jayakumar asked me to drive right at the edge. I just turned the vehicle to the edge when he whispered Tiger... I just looked out of the window towards his side & was amazed to see this huge Tiger lying in water around 10ft from us. It soon jumped out of the water & went behind our vehicle & started walking to towards the jungle staring at us. It went to the edge of the forest, sprayed & looked at us for a while & began walking on the edge. We stood still & waited for 2-3min & began to drive along the edge of the forest looking for the Tiger. There he was lying below a bamboo clump. He was relaxed at our presence. We managed to stay with this Tiger for 3 hrs until a heard of elephants came & drove it away.