I had driven down to Uttarakhand from Bangalore. It was a 7,000 km roadtrip, up and down, and I need to write about it someday 😼
I spent a few days in Kaladhungi, where Jim Corbett had his winter home, and where he learnt his jungle lore. I went for a few jungle walks, visiting the places mentioned in Jungle Lore and other books. It was interesting and heartening to know that that forest had recovered after a few decades of exploitation, and animals were all around. I saw tiger pug marks and droppings when on the other side of the Boar river. And I heard from our resort owner that elephants visit that place frequently. For that matter, when my friend and I were driving around on the Nainital road to try and spot leopards – it was around 8 pm – a tigress and a cub came right inside the resort! Apparently the sambars were going crazy. We saw the pugmarks the next morning. Sigh. We missed that!
This shot was taken when the sun was about to set and we (my friend and I, along with our naturalist) were walking back on a forest trail. A few minutes back we had encountered an old kill (4-5 days old) of a tiger, just a few bones remained under a bush, along with some lingering smell of rotten flesh and death. This stretch was full of teak trees, so I positioned myself and experimented a little to take this sunset shot through a teak leaf. My companions had walked ahead, so had to hurry up to catch up with them. Not a good idea to be alone around sunset and with big cats as well as elephants around.
