[W.A.G.7]

I have always been a nature and a wildlife nut. The slightest mention of nature excites me to no extent. Just give me a camera and a jungle and I can spend all the time from sunrise to sunset without any thought of food, sleep, drink or anything.

Last week, I had a wonderful opportunity to visit Kanha National Park. It is one of the best forests, that I have ever visited. I was there from 24th May to 30th May and got a chance to see 4 tigers in the wild. This is my 4th trip, I have been to Ranthambhore, Bandhavgadh and Gir N.P previously.

A fellow Bhpian was there with me; he is also good friends with Bhpian Abheekg (I know his name but not his t-bhp nickname!). So here is the the entire trip report with approx 177 odd photos.

Yes, 177 odd photos, this is going to make one big thread. But I wanted to share all the photos with you all. In those 6 days, I clicked some 700 odd photos, out of which I am showcasing the 177 which I think are good ones.

Before we actually begin, let me put in a few disclaimers here:

• The entire camp, right from starting point in Pune to the end point was totally arranged by Foliage Outdoors. They are very professional in their approach and conduct such nature camps extremely well. So a big thank you to them for arranging everything just perfectly. They are based in Pune and can also arrange customised trips for you. You can visit their website here: Homepage - Foliage Outdoors - Wildlife, Adventure and Trekking Camps, Pune, Mumbai.
• The entire cost of the trip was 12,800/- per person. It included everything. And I mean everything i.e. travelling from Pune to Jabalpur (Garibrath), Jabalpur to Kanha (Mahindra Xylo, AC on all the time!), all stay at the resort for the 4 days inclusive of breakfast, lunch, evening tea with snacks & dinner. The cost also included the safari charges for the morning/evening safaris, guide charges, service tax, permits in the forests etc.etc.
• Thanks for Mowgli tours and travels for arranging the Xylos for travelling Jabalpur to Kanha and Kanha to Nagpur.
• Another thanks for Krishna resorts for the excellent room service, food and a super clean resort where we thoroughly enjoyed staying. If anyone is interested, I can provide their phone numbers and other details, you can PM me.
• I am a total novice with DSLR's. So I would expect a few inputs from all you experts out there on how some photos could have been improved. Especially with the cropping and lighting and other details. If you can show me an example, that would be really great.
• The photos I have posted here are not the actual high-res images. I have all the high-res images on my PC, but for the purpose of posting, I have reduced the resolution. I need help on this too, i.e. how to reduce the resolution without reducing the quality. If anyone wants, I can send the high-res images and/or the RAW files.
• I have posted the images without a watermark now; what with online plagiarism rampant, I am paranoid about having my images stolen; but GTO has promised me 1 dairy milk per photo if they get copied!! . Apart from adding the border, none of the images was touched/done up in photoshop in any way. They are as they were taken by the camera.
• The Equipment used was Nikon D5000 DSLR, 18-55 kit lens and 55-200 Nikkor zoom.
• All the photos where people are there, are already posted on facebook/picasa etc. So I have not masked out any faces anywhere.

So, let's begin the fascinating journey in the imposing sal forests of the Kipling country...

Day1: we arrive at Jabalpur station.


The place where we had our breakfast. It was a nice and clean restaurant run by MPTDC.



View of the Narmada from the resort.


After breakfast, we reach the Dhuandhaar waterfalls at Bhedaghat. Bhojan milne ka ek matra sthaan!! yeah!!!


In peak summer, it had so much water, so you can just imagine what it will be like after the rains! India's Niagara? You bet it is.




A wide angle view of the same.


The ropeway and Bajrang Bali. With his blessings, we started the onwards journey towards Kanha!



So, arrival day comes to an end after we reach the resort. The next day, we begin our journey into the forest at 5.30AM


We reach the second gate - Kisli gate


The sun rises over another day as we enter the forest.


Instantly, we come across this dhole, in front of our gypsy.


He lies down in front of us, till we finish clicking. I think he knew, we wanted to photograph him.


Meanwhile, another pack of dholes blings away at high speed after a herd of deer! What a welcome, to enter the forest and see a pack of 15 dholes!!


The weather was mostly cloudy for the entire day


The idyllic roads that lead to nowhere


This rock is known as Dig-Dola. It is a large rock resting on a very small surface area.


And barely 15 mins later, we spot our first tiger. Only a glimpse, but we are excited.


Look at the hordes, gathered just to see him!


I will be posting more pics in the consecutive posts since it is impossible for me to post all the pics in one single post. Also it would be inconvenient for everyone, if there is one long post with all the pics. So patience

[W.A.G.7]

This bird is a grey francolin. But I am not too sure.


The ubiquitous spotted deer. Very common, but, every trip must have a photograph of it.




While we are looking at the deer; out of nowhere, this jackal arrives on the scene. One look at his face, and you know, he is upto no good!


He leisurly crosses our gypsy and disappears into the jungle behind us without even bothering to look at us. Jackals are highly opportunistic scavengers, who will eat anything given a chance.


That's an indian roller in action. They are beautiful birds with blue underwings.


National bird of India - The indian pea-fowl.



This one is a male.


This is a long billed vulture sitting up on a tree. Lack of thermals means vultures can't soar in the sky.


After that, we come to an area called 'Nakti-Ghaati' where we spot a tiger starting to move from the water hole.


We rush across the road and wait for him to appear on the road.


Here he comes.


Looks at all the gypsies... Doesn't care one bit about the gypsies and people madly shooting away


After this super pose he disappeared into the Jungle.


Trivia... This male tiger is known as "Munna". Observe his fore-head carefully, and you will observe the acronym 'C','A','T' written on his forehead. This is naturally formed!! Sometimes you cannot comprehend nature!



After the thrilling tiger episode, we are all grinning ear to ear. Lucky, lucky and only lucky!!! To spot a tiger on the very first ride, and that too from so very close!

Going further, we come across these langurs sitting on a branch
They are doing nothing, and it looks like they won't do anything for the rest of the day!


This particular sambar, kept sticking out it's tongue at us every few minutes or so!! These two were the fun moments in the jungle!


This is the main gate of the Kanha N.P - Kisli zone.


Khatia gate. This is the outer gate. The inner one is the Kisli gate.


Thats a spotted owlet in the tree. Owlets are not owls!!


The landscapes are utterly brilliant. I wish I had a wide angle zoom lens! At least I wish I had an 18-55 kit lens.


That's a female sambar. They are the largest deer species.

[W.A.G.7]

Just as we start to exit the forest late in the evening on day one, this gaur decides to stop us in our tracks.



A fully grown male gaur weighs atleast 1.5 tonnes. And they are complete body builders! See this one...


So, we come to the end of day 1 in the jungle. The sunsets are super duper in any Indian forest. Anyone who has an eye for a sunset (And the number is alas very less!!), will know what I mean. This one was pure golden/mango colored one.


This the last photo of the day before light had gone out completely.


Day 2 begins with a bang, as we spot a jungle fowl on entering the forest.


Half a minute delay in seeing the jungle fowl, costs us dear as we narrowly miss the sloth bear. The black dot, you see running ahead is the sloth bear. Had we not waited for the jungle fowl, ours would have been the first gypsy.


Going ahead in the trail, we come across fresh pugmarks of tiger. He has just passed around half an hour in front of us.


With the excitement in us, we come to the watering hole where we spot a barking deer. These are shy creatures, who seldom come out of the forest.


He instantly vanishes into the forest, when he hears the vehicles coming on the road.


Next we come across a group of 3 barasingha females grazing.




Next to them are these two juveniles play fighting each other... All these games will be useful when they grow up!


This is a shikra. Cute looking pigeon sized bird, but it is a raptor.


This is a roller again. But see the difference, a small amount of light can make to a photograph!!


And a barasingha male. Not full grown though, else he would have had 12 tines on his antlers.



Looks straight at us in wonder!


A very cute and a memorable moment for all of us The baby must have been wondering why all these people are clicking away madly!! It simply kept smiling at all of us!



Another landscape. All the open areas that you see, were once villages. They were re-located outside the forest and the area was converted to grasslands.


This bird is known as the paddy field pipit.


This is another raptor, a changeable hawk eagle.


This one is a small green bee eater. It was accustomed to people photographing it.



Another winding road later, we come to an end of the ride 1 of day 2. No tiger, but we enjoyed the jungle and got to see a lot of animals


I took this photo to test the macro mode of the camera. This was taken at the resort.

[W.A.G.7]

fffAt the resort, I spot this beautiful black hooded oriole flitting in the trees. The branch played a spoilsport, but then you can't get every photo opportunity spoon fed to you


Here it is feeding on some small fruits in the trees.


Clumps of bamboo. Nothing great but I found the colour contrast interesting


Day 2 evening ride starts, and we spot the crested serpent eagle flying away after drinking water at the water hole.


Another jungle fowl. But, we don't stop here, for we are afraid of making the same mistake that we did earlier.


A family of sambar at the water hole. They were curious about the gypsy.


This is a wild boar feeding nearby.


Can you spot the tiger in the pic?


Contrasting shades of green. After I took this photo, the sky became overcast almost immediately and it started raining heavily. Hastily wrapping all the camera's and lenses in plastic bags, we huddled for 2 hrs in the open gypsy, soaked to the bone. So, no more photos in the afternoon session


But as we are ending the ride, we come across another beautiful sunset.


And we spot this dhole pack, preparing for a hunt. There's a silver lining behind every cloud!! Inspite of the rain, we got to see so much!!

[W.A.G.7]

Day 3 begins!! This is the post which has all the super climax in it!!

Enter the forest, and we spot the spotted deers at the water hole. Good pic, but highlights got slightly blown out. Can someone show me how to recover the overexposed pic? I can share the RAW file.


Thats a Mrs. Jackal sitting on the ground. In front of her was her den with 3 pups in it.


Oriental spotted dove.


This is a greater flameback.Poor lighting conditions


Fast forward an hour, and the tiger show is announced as soon as they locate a tiger. Soon we find ourselves in the queue for the safari on the elephant back. You can see the people going on the elephant back to where the tiger was there.


Yippeee!!!! The Tiger. Our mouths are dry with excitement, we cannot believe our good luck!!!!


He's resting in the shade


Do you recognize him? It's Munna again!! This guy is a poser.


He had killed and eaten some full grown animal in the night.


That's why you can see his full stomach. And he was obviously thirsty and panting a lot.


Close up of his face. Those 4 inch canines are enough to make anyone scared!!


He glances at us annoyingly. Obviously he's not happy with all the elephants and tourists!

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He gets up and starts walking towards the deeper jungle. He was in no mood to wait for anyone.




The mahout and the elephant who made our day!!! We begin our return journey after the thrilling encounter.


Day 3 evening: The last ride begins. We spot this young gaur who has the look of a person who has diarrhea.


Going further, we come across this horde of people waiting for a tigress to come out of the grass.


Before we could hardly blink our eyes, and before anyone could understand what was going on, the grass on the LHS of our gypsy gently stirred.


And out stepped a young tigress in her prime. She is known as the Umarpani tigress. A beautiful animal she is.


Hardly a glimpse, for not more than 10 seconds and she vanishes into the elephant grass again! Inspite of so many gypsies around, she coolly does the vanishing trick in front of everyone. We are now on cloud nine. Last ride and another tiger (tigress!!!)


Another beautiful sunset as we end our ride. Kanha N.P: I promise, one day I will return again! This trip has been so so so rewarding...

[W.A.G.7]

These are a few last minute miscellaneous shots. And also the last of the photos. I hope you all enjoyed my journey

After watching the Umarpani tigress, everyone was late in making to the gate. This looks like an army convoy!!


These last pics are taken at our resort. These are the rooms and other miscellaneous buildings in the resort. And I promise there is a treat for FIAT lovers in the next and the last post

[W.A.G.7]

For all you FIAT lovers out there:

The resort had this wonderful Fiat 508. It is complete, but badly in need of a restoration. I mean; I think she is complete, but we need the experts here to give their opinion. Someone please, please rescue her . Looks like she isn't going anywhere soon, unless she is rescued. I can give you all contact details of the resort.





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[noopster]

Great stuff Ketan! The "CAT" on Munna is clearly visible- for a moment I was indignant that someone carved that out before realising it is a natural formation. Amazing!

I am not a photography expert but I enjoyed the pictures as well. The watermarking is subtle and much-required. You have captured the spirit of the jungle very well.

[Fauji]

Ketan,

You made me relive the days we spent in Kanha in March. Thanks for the nice pics. Were you able to see male Barasingha? We missed it. The good old spotted owl will always be there to greet the visitors! They are really cute. We shot pics from our Sony Cyber shot which is not a match to your Nikon. You were also lucky to spot the tiger on Safari which we missed by a whisker. Of course, we saw the guy from Elephant!!

My experience in Kanha and Chattisgarh is in this TL link.

http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/travel...h-kanha-5.html

[W.A.G.7]

Bumping up the thread once as per the norm. I will put up some other misc. pictures in the next few posts today evening. Thanks everyone!

[.anshuman]

Thread moved from the Assembly Line to the Travelogues section. Thanks for sharing!

[Subrat Seet]

Superb. Kanha is beautiful. Nice captures. Lucky to see Munna, i too saw sitting on a waterhole.

[fazalaliadil]

W.A.G.7,

Your Nikon did very good, but of course it is the man behind the camera that is responsible for this beautiful photographic tour of Kanha, enjoyed the forest and animals. Thanks!
Regards,

[gd1418]

W.A.G.7,

Your travelogue brought back memories of my trip to Kanha, where I had the chance to see the Umarpaani Tigress with her 18 month old male cub and of course Munna.

It is all here at - http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/travel...ml#post2355538