November 24, 2023

Friday, 11:30 PM

Undisclosed Location

Gothangaon, 

Umred Karhandla 

Wildlife Sanctuary,

Maharashtra, India

On our morning safari at Nawegaon-Nagzira Tiger Reserve today, we came across an amazingly bold leopard, who was so fearless and confident that he kept walking on the path for over an hour, providing us a great opportunity to photograph and record him. Generally, leopards are not as bold and tend to take cover the moment they come across any kind of movement, particular human movement because they are extremely wary of human presence, gypsy or no gypsy. But this one was different, and did not seem to be bothered about any presence, human or animal though it could have pretty tough time defending itself, had a tiger confronted him.  

After the morning safari, we had to leave for Umred Karhandla Wildlife Sanctuary, and so it was packing and traveling throughout the day again. But since it was not too far away from Nawegaon-Nagzira Tiger Reserve, we could start out slightly late. And so we started just a bit late with our destination fed into the ever-dependable google maps to make it the efficient guide it generally is, which role it played well until it got confused and we got lost. And then we found our way the old fashioned way of asking around and took much longer to arrive at our destination than we had thought. But now we are here. 

We had no safari booked for today because we knew that we were not exactly going to arrive in time for it. Besides, even after just a few hours of travel with the laptop in the lap, as we edit on the go (as much as we can on the move), I am too tired to go on safari. So it suits me better to start in the morning with a fresh mind and some sleep under the belt. Therefore, safari begins tomorrow.