November 20, 2023

Monday, 11:30 PM

Pench Jungle Camp,

Tehsil Kurai, 

District Seoni,

Madhya Pradesh

India

Let me just say, the day today was fabulous! There have been a lot of low days of no sighting, but today was one of the best days in that regard. In the morning, we got to see Baras with her cubs, but this time around they were playing with their mother in absolute abandon and nothing looks as overwhelmingly heartwarming as tiger cubs around their mother, especially when they are as many as three and as young as three-four months old. To sight cubs as young is exceptionally rare because tigresses do not allow them to be seen in open for the fear of their being spotted and killed by a strange male tiger who might want to mate with the tigress. Of course, there are circumstances when tigresses don’t have to be quite so exceedingly cautious, but those circumstances are also quite rare. So we were exceptionally lucky to find Baras with her cubs, and they had no care in the world, which was the best thing about this sighting. 

I got a great number of pictures and a lot of footage of the mother and the cubs, and the whole audiovisual record of their playfulness looks so breathtakingly wonderful that no words can possibly do justice. We spent a lot of time around the Baras tiger family. 

And when we moved on, we found Bindu, another tigress, with her cub, who is much older (at about 18 months of age, I guess) than Baras’ little ones, who are really little, but Bindu’s cub is also just as much of a baby — more like a slightly grown little one. And for tigers, the expression big little cub is not self-contradictory because the babies can grow quite big in no time and continue to be babies, which is more than apparent in their general behaviour and insatiable curiosity, not to mention their clumsy, bumbling ways.

It is observed that the behaviour of the cubs does not change even when they grow up towards their mothers, but when they are grown up enough to start marking their territory, the mother leaves the territory to allow them their space and to avoid conflict of interests. Mother tigers are often seen to leave their territories to their daughters while male tigers tend to migrate to a different location to fend for themselves.  

Right after our return from the safari, I went to the editing table to edit today’s Vlog, which has been uploaded. Do watch!