October 25, 2023

Wednesday, 11:00 PM

Greenscape Satpura 

Jungle Retreat,

Madhai, Madhya Pradesh, 

India

There are highs and there are lows. Yesterday was the latter. But today I got a few excellent pictures of two tigers, brother and sister in the Madhai Zone of Satpura Tiger Reserve, which is not known for frequent tiger sightings; and yet there I was looking at two magnificent tigers lounging around, perfectly calm and at ease, almost posing. 

Satpura’s tigers, as most other animals here, are by and large shy of people and are not given to making an appearance before human beings, whether with camera or without. I don’t think tigers understand cameras even though I cannot be one hundred percent sure because, well, for starters, I am not a tiger and so far no tiger has taken upon himself/herself to share his/her perspective on the cameras with me or anybody (or maybe they did say something about it in the growls and hisses they direct at us sometimes when they see us humans and are not too pleased). Most likely, they think cameras are just a different kind of goggles or glass or changeable eyes (“Who knows, these humans are just… funny…. growl… something stuck in my teeth…damn fawn… yawn… so sleepy…”). 

In the morning, when we entered the Satpura reserve, we saw there were safari gypsies gathered at a spot. They were happily looking at two tigers sitting a little far away in the grass. Eventually, the tigers walked into the woods and the safari gypsies dispersed, too. We decided to wait some more, but after an hour or two, when they did not emerge, we decided to take a round of the jungle and return around the same place to continue our wait.

But while we were on our round of the jungle, we found the tiger bro-sis sitting bang on the road. We stopped the safari gypsy at a distance and I went about clicking the young tigers. We got some excellent shots of them. They didn’t seem to be in any hurry to hide into the forest and kept relaxing for quite some time before walking away, into the woods. These two are the cubs of the tigress we met on our last trip to Satpura reserve.

Today’s video went live on time. This is the second time in a row we have done that, which is very heartening, but things are still wobbly on the editing and upload front. We need to make it way better, and also sooner than yesterday, so to speak.