Animals on the Edge Blog
First sightings
It’s 5:30AM, I’ve been asleep for just two hours after a day and a half travelling and I can’t believe I’m having to get up. Even so, I spash cold water over my head, eat some toothpaste and grab the (fortunately pre-packed) camera bags. Nanda informs me that the special permissions we need for commercial photography have just come through (he kept that quiet last night!) and we’re all set to go. As a commercial photographic party, we skip the usual formalities getting into the Park, which can be laborious. Waiting for news from the trackers, we drive around, scouting the area. After a while we hear the elephants have found a tiger and we head for the staging point. Passing the queues of tourists, our elephant and mahout are waiting for us. I climb aboard and Nanda follows, as guide and interpreter, and we head into the forest. The tiger is well camouflaged and hiding under a bush. We wait patiently. And wait. And wait. Eventually the cat emerges and begins to wander off. We follow. This is my first ever sighting of a wild tiger and it’s mezmerising. Such a beautiful animal, so enigmatic and majestic. Photography from the elephant is challenging. There’s little room to manoeuver and getting a good angle is difficult. But I relay my instructions to Nanda who barks them to the mahout and we make progress. I’m using two cameras, one with my 70-200mm lens, the other with the longer 200-400mm. The tiger allows us to follow her for twenty minutes and then, seemingly bored of our interest, she twists sharply and in an instant is gone - lost in the tall grasses. What I wasn’t to know at the time, of all our sightings in the coming days, this was to prove the best.
Posted on 01/15 at 12:21 PM
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