Sadly it's become necessary to update this post. On March 20th I heard the sad news from Ranthambhore that T28, also known as Star Male or Sitara, died of natural causes. Tragically, it was not natural causes. While the truth is sometimes hard to establish the events seem to have been thus: T28 was old but still in good physical condition. He'd been displaced from his territory around the lakes and had taken a less productive territory on the edge of the park. Like many t

It's with great sadness that I received the news today, August 18th 2016, that Machali passed away at 9:50 am (Indian time) as a result of extreme old age. She was born during the monsoon months of 1997 making her an incredible 19 years old. In her prime she occupied the beautiful lake area of Ranthambhore National Park for about 10 years, defeating all rivals including a few crocodiles! Many of the pivotal moments of her life were captured on film / video, making her the

So I've added a few images from the 2016 Ranthambhore trip to the Indian Wildlife gallery, please have a look. I thought I would start this post with a pretty rare sighting and image of a male Indian Leopard which we were lucky enough to see early one morning. I say lucky, but that's not true. We had just entered Route 1 of Ranthambhore, which at that moment was lacking tigers, when our fabulous guide and friend Mahesh Choudhary heard the a single Peacock alarm call (Their

It's been a week since we left Ranthambhore National Park during which time we clocked up our 100th Ranthambhore game drive, spread over 7 visits. We were quite lucky this year as the light was very good, key to that I think was that the atmosphere was not too dusty, and we were also a month earlier. We again had regular, good sightings which is not down to luck. The key here is to enter the park with a good guide, and we have always used one of the very best - Mahesh Chau

........ a new record for our group. So ended our shortest visit to Ranthambhore. In a week when sightings across the park were hard to come by, we managed to see a tiger on 8 or the 11 game drives with ten individuals seen, three of them new to us. The stand out moment was the fantastic encounter with T39 which provided us with wonderful images, closely followed by the sighting of Machali who we simply adore. At almost 18 years of age Machali has been defying the odds sin

Good news about T39. Two days after our fantastic sighting a single jeep briefly sighted T39 with two cubs, which was quite a surprise as our previous observation of her teets suggested she only had one cub. I guess I'll have to study my images in more detail to see if there is a second, less prominant, teet present. We did stake out her new den site for an entire afternoon in temperatures approaching 45 centigrade but to no avail. Happily for us we did encounter the cub's

On the 26th May, we had a magnificent sighting on the tigress known as T39 or Mala. It started with a close encounter and ended with following her as she set about hunting deer. She currently has cubs, her second litter, but sadly observation suggests she only has one remaining cub. It’s possible to tell this because the cubs take ownership of a specific nipple and they and only they will feed from it. When T39 was first sighted after giving birth there were 3 very promin

Trouble connecting to the internet has somewhat limited my blogging, which is a shame because Ranthambhore continues to deliver tiger sightings. While sightings across the park seem to be very limited, our lucky streak shows no sign of ending. Highlights to date were an excellent sighting of Machali, the matriarch of tourism area, who at 17 years of age has been in her twilight years for at least the last 3 years. Thankfully, she looked in good condition having recently fea

Tigers A fantastic first day with three tigers seen in two drives. After a horrible journey that involved a 2 hour delay in Heathrow and a missed train in Delhi as a consequence, we arrived in Tiger Moon at 23:30. After food and some unpacking and preparation for the first game we snatched 4 hours sleep before the alarm went for the first game drive. We entered the park’s main gate at about 06:00 and headed to the southern boundary, along route 2, to a waterhole where a tig

Despite deciding we were going to "do something different this year" we've decided to return for a short visit to Ranthambhore. It's hard not to want to catch up with the lives of all the tigers, not to mention the possibilities of seeing small cubs. #ranthambhore #tigers