This was a tricky picture to take, owing mainly to this particularly shy male leopard in Bhadra Tiger Reserve, Karnataka, who we found marking its territory, leisurely rubbing its cheek against the tree. We got several pictures of him engaging with the tree, but this one captures the playfulness the best. It was only after he was done with his business of marking that it noticed us sitting in a safari gypsy at a considerable distance. He didn’t seem to mind us perhaps because we were too far away to be alarming or intrusive.
