Photographing tigers in India is always tough because their excellent camouflage and shy nature make them hard to find, much less photograph. People have been known to spend a week on game drives in India’s National Parks and come up empty. Nevertheless we embarked on a three week trip to India to hopefully find and photograph these magnificent breasts. The enormity of the challenge was brought home by this sign that you see leaving the park.
We were successful
No, really successful. We saw real tigers and not just running away from us.
In our first 4 game drives in Bandhavgarh National Park between the two of us (neither of us made all the drives due to queasy stomachs – another story) we saw 5 tigers and more importantly got 5 good to great photo opportunities like these
A good photographic opportunity is when the tiger is close and in the open like this:
The magnificence of these beasts reminds us that tigers are the true kings of the jungle. Not lions, who are smaller than tigers, not as smart, and don’t even live in the jungle (they live on the savannah (Africa’s plains)).
The temperatures hit the century mark most every day we were tiger hunting. While we didn’t go out in mid day, it was hot enough for a tiger to overcome a cat’s dislike of water to take a bath.
Of course after such a great start our luck changed. On our next 12 game drives we saw only 2 tigers and only 1 good enough to photograph (the other required binoculars to see). But what we saw while looking for tigers is the subject of our next blog.