On the Leopards' Trail in Marwar

Alert Leopard on a boulder in Bera

Trying to sight a Leopard (Panthera Pardus) in a jungle is perhaps no different than trying to find a needle in a haystack. On the many trips to the jungles of India, with some patience and luck, one can have excellent sightings of tigers, lions, even the shy sloth bear, and other mammals. But the leopard is an elusive beast. It can hide itself in any nook & cranny of the jungle, is smaller than the other carnivores, enjoys excellent camouflage, prefers hunting in the night, and with its acrobatic skills can perch itself on trees and boulders. Even if sightings occur, they are more in the nature of blink and you miss it. Though, we have heard stories of people seeing a leopard, sitting nonchalantly in plain view of the human eye, in the jungles of South India, such reports have been fewer from those of North India.

Despite several trips in the wild, we had thus far been unlucky in the matter of leopard sighting. The closest we ever came to sighting it was when we spotted a leopard’s kill but, not the perpetrator himself!

No longer wanting to leave things to a chance, we decided to take matters in our own hands and headed straight to Bera, a dusty village in southern Rajasthan amidst the Aravalli mountains and surrounded by water bodies. Here our abode was Thakur Devi Singhji’s orchard or rather the Leopard’s Lair Resort as it is officially called.

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Shilonda Trail (Sanjay Gandhi National Park): Update

Here is an update to my previous post on Shilonda Trail in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (Mumbai).

Last Sunday I traversed the Shilonda Trail again with few of my friends. Here is a bit of dope for those wanting to go on this trail. This trail is closed for the general public and requires special permission from the forest department to go. Good news is that the Nature Interpretation Centre inside SGNP provides this permission for a nominal fee of Rs. 50 per head, albeit for a group size of 10 people. In case you are fewer than 10, then a lumpsum amount of Rs. 500/- needs to be paid. The department issues a receipt so everything is above board. 

This time around our focus was on birds and we managed to sight around 30 species of birds (fewer than we expected - but that's luck). Our prize catch was a pair of Indian Grey Hornbill. However, we didn't get any good bird photographs... but got some decent nature and street photography images.


Check out the images here.

Ranthambhore National Park II - Charge in the Rajbagh Lake

Portrait of T-17 / Sundari Tigress

It was a cloudy evening on our third day in the Ranthambhore National Park. As I looked heavenward, I said - well, bad light to add to our woes! Thank you! So far on our current trip, we had tasted limited success with tiger sightings - none worth photographing (see details at the end). Hence, for our fifth safari in the jungle, we were at the same time desperate for a decent photography opportunity as well as nonchalant about the prospects. We were getting closer to a tiger with every passing safari and we still had two more to go after this one!

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Ovalekar Wadi - abode of the butterflies (Part 2)

Common Jezebel Butterfly

Our second outing at Ovalekar Wadi (read about the place and our first trip here) also proved to be somewhat of a damp squib. The light, though, was excellent this time around. But, the chill in the morning resulted in the butterflies taking a bit too long to wake up from their slumber and busy themselves with the task of looking out for breakfast!

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Malshej Ghat, the Prince of Sahyadris! - a perfect weekend getaway from Mumbai!

Malshej Ghat, view from the plateau

Not many would believe it, but Mumbai is still a blessed place! As Mumbaikars we are indeed privileged to have places like Malshej Ghat at a driving distance of only 3 hours.

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Ovalekar Wadi - abode of the butterflies (Part 1)

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Kaas Plateau - Maharashtra's Valley of Flowers - a heaven on earth!

Let a million flowers bloom! - Kaas Plateau

Picture yourself at a place where there are rows and rows of blooming flowers on a flat land, as far as your eyes can see - different colours, different varieties - surrounded by verdant mountains, lakes and valleys. If you think I am asking you to recollect a scene from some Yash Chopra film then you are mistaken. I am alluding to a place which is only 6-7 hours drive South of Mumbai and about 2-3 hours from Pune.

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Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Shilonda trail - A walk in the woods!

Mumbai, aptly called Maximum City by Suketu Mehta in his book by the same name, is a city of contrasts. One such element is the presence of a National Park in the midst of what is India's busiest metropolis. Which other metropolis in the world can boast of such a privilege? To most Mumbaikars (especially of the types born and brought up in the city like me), the 104 sq. Km Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) brings back memories of an unspoilt childhood when our parents would take us to the park on a lazy Sunday for a jungle safari or an excursion to the famed Kanheri Caves (they are 2400 years old!) and of course those lovely school picnics. Alas, as we have grown up, and through the boom years, places such as these have only remained confined to memories for most people.

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Maharashtra Nature Park, Mumbai: Butterfly diaries and more…

Maharashtra Nature Park, also called the Mahim Nature Park (MNP), is a 15 hectare (37 acres) patch of green in Mumbai, which comes as a shock (albeit a pleasant one) to anybody who visits it, especially during the monsoons. One of the reasons for the surprise is, apart from the fact that it is situated in Mumbai - a concrete jungle with sky high land prices, its location “within” Mumbai! How does this sound for a place that resembles a mini forest? – located on the Southern bank of the dirty Mithi River and squeezed between Asia's largest slum Dharavi and Mumbai's most sought after business location, the Bandra Kurla Complex!

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Lahaul - Spiti Valley Jeep Safari: Notes & anecdotes from a 7 day odyssey through the middle land!

Connoisseur’s delight…door to freedom...

Komic

If you are not averse to any of these -

• living at an average altitude of 4,250 metres in a cold desert;
• travelling on narrow (single lane), gravel and water filled roads winding through the Himalayas, which stare thousands of feet down into a violent river, and where road blocks due to landslides and snowfalls are as common as the day and night;
• living without newspaper and telecommunication network (save for BSNL) in a place unscathed by modernity;

then Spiti is the place for you - the connoisseur traveller, the solitude seeker, the adventurer!

Spiti Valley came on my radar a couple of years back while researching some exotic driving holidays in the Himalayas. I was instantly taken in. Ladakh had been on my travel list for over seven years (since the time the populace had not even heard about it), but seeing the swarm of casual tourists thronging to it since the release of 3 Idiots, I decided that it had to be Spiti that I must visit this time around, before the hotels over there too started dishing out thalis!

View of Spiti Valley from Kye Monastery

Spiti, which means ‘the middle country’, is the land of ragged and snow capped mountains that reach out to the clear deep blue skies. Here, in the cold desert, trees are scarce and the moonscape expansive. Spiti is the land of several perennial rivers - Spiti, Pin, Chandra - whose gurgling sounds will soothe you in the night and whose ferocity will awe you when you travel alongside them in the day time. Ah, and not to mention the placid, azure blue lakes like Chandra Taal, Nako, Dhankar. The observer would also be struck by some of the most beautiful canyons and the most unusual clay and rock formations along the river bed and in the mountains. The continuity of the landscape is only broken by numerous waterfalls and glaciers, including one of world's largest non-polar glaciers - Bara Shigri.

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Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve, Maharashtra, India - A journey into the wild!

Planning a "hot" weekend excursion... Two months back a casual discussion with my friend on visiting a national park for our May – June sojourn threw up Tadoba - Andhari Tiger Reserve (TATR), located in the Indian State of Maharashtra, as an option. The park was not only brimming with tigers, but we had also never been there earlier, and the place had been in news as a number of tiger cubs had been born there in the past 12 months. The best part was that we could cover the place over a weekend! While we knew that temperatures in this part of the country could touch 48 degrees Celsius in May – June, we also knew that summers were the best time to sight tigers and the number of casual tourists too would be fewer. Coming close on the heels of my visit to the Ranthambhore National Park, I was naturally excited about the prospect. Deciding to look no further, we packed our bags and set sail....
 
For a slide show of complete set of pictures from Tadoba - Andhari Tiger Reserve, please click HERE.

Exploring the wild side of Maharashtra... Also called the "Jewel of Vidarbha", Tadoba - Andhari Tiger Reserve is Maharashtra's oldest National Park located in the Chandrapur district, about 155 KM from the Nagpur International Airport. TATR is home to about 43 Royal Bengal Tigers (Panthera Tigris Tigris - India's National Animal), some 80 species of other mammals and 280 species of birds. A Southern Tropical Dry Deciduous Forest, it is largely a flatland with 40 per cent of its area covered with bamboo trees, which gives it a unique appearance. Compared to other popular tiger reserves in India, TATR is relatively under-explored and under-photographed. The place has only of late been attracting tourists and is slowly coming up on the Indian wildlife circuit. At the moment, however, people from the Nagpur - Chandrapur belt comprise bulk of the tourists.

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Birds of Ranthambhore National Park, India

This is a follow-up article to my previous post “The Tigers of Ranthambore”.

For a slide show of complete set of pictures of the Birds of Ranthambhore, please click here.

The Royal Bengal Tiger is the magnet that attracts thousands of visitors every year to the Ranthambhore National Park. However, birds form an equally important part of the biodiversity of this park’s ecosystem and one cannot help but admire their beauty and melodious voice. In fact on occasions, when sighting a tiger proves elusive, bird watching keeps your spirit buoyed.

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The Tigers of Ranthambhore National Park, India

“A Tiger is a large-hearted gentleman with boundless courage and that when he is exterminated – as exterminated he will be unless public opinion rallies to his support – India will be the [sic] poorer, having lost the finest of her fauna.”

 – Jim Corbett, Man-Eaters of Kumaon (1944)

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Bird watching over last few months - Flamingos of Sewri, Mumbai

Portrait of a flamingo

Lesser flamingos (called Rohit in Hindi) are beautiful wading birds (long necked and long legged) with pink plumage. They have a bill that is shaped uniquely to filter algae, small invertebrates and other food particles from the water while holding their head upside down. They migrate in winter from the Rann of Kutch (located in the western State of Gujarat), where they breed, to various parts of India and are found in Mumbai along its eastern coastline from Sewri to Airoli. An estimated 15,000 Lesser and Greater flamingos flock to this area every year!

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