Living into the Wild

An Hour through the Eyepiece

K.Gudi

07’03’2011

Today I was unwilling to go for afternoon safari as we have started playing volley ball in the camp. We have made two teams between our staff and there is a healthy competition between each of them. There’s always a zest to play as the clock ticks 4 pm. Its good fun and joyful moment for me to see them right on their toes, competing, cheering, teasing and at last returning back to work with a fresh mind.

But destiny had something else written for us. I decided to join our guest Mr.Banerjee as it was more than 3 days that I went for safari. He was from Kolkata and it was his first visit to South Indian forest.

So myself, Thapaji and our guest started a memorable safari of our lives.

We started with 3 feet road. By the time it was 5pm we reached Kolani. Saw the resident brown fish owl on the check dam, common hawk cuckoo, a group of wild boars, plum headed parakeets and spotted deers in the grassland. As we reached the “Leopard rock” (commonly known, as many a times we have seen leopard there) we saw couple of gaur. So we stopped and watched them from a distance unknown to the fact that a leopard was marking its territory on the road to the next turn.

Suddenly my eyes catched the attention of this leopard and without hesitation I uttered “leopard leopard”. Thapaji rushed towards it to have a better sight and as soon as he saw us he started walking towards the gaurs near the rock. He was in no hurry at all. With belly full he slowly crossed the bush and sat on the rock in open.

In Open?? My…God !! No words to see such a huge male sitting in front. It was hardly 25 meters away from the gaur but they unnoticed him completely. Mr. Banerjee was enthralled and astonished to have such a sight. It was his first encounter for so long.

I clicked some pictures but this time my heart was unwilling to click than to enjoy this moment. We brought with us two binoculars, so the guest and Thapaji was using that. I stayed back looking at the leopard with the camera eye piece. He changed his position and came a lil closer to us without fear and that was the moment which was unforgettable. Seeing this predator fearless of our presence was beautiful.

To watch him through the eye piece looking at the gaurs, yawning, turning around and lay down on the rock was speechless. Truly blissful !!

After some time gaurs came near the rock and he moved with no intention to have a conflict. So he went further back on top from where we can only make out that somewhere behind the rock he was sitting. We thoroughly enjoyed this sighting and it lasted for more than an hour.

Really sometimes some guests come with great luck. Mr. Banerjee was one of them, who finished his two days stay with couple of beautiful sighting of a leopard and 3 sloth bears.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 9th, 2011 at 12:27 pm. It is filed under Wild Encounters and tagged with K.Gudi, Leopard, Wild Encounters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.