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Taj, Tigers and Mother Ganga


Filip A

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5 minutes ago, Athene said:

Beautiful photos and useful information, thanks for sharing @Filip A

 

@Athene thank you very much

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Time to leave, via zone 2 (where we saw a glimpse of T105 Noori and her father T57) we drove back to zone 3, hoping to see the Arrowhead family again.

 

It didn’t take long before we spotted one of the youngsters.

 

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A few minutes later her sister arrived …

 

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Some stretching and time to move on

 

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This wonderful sighting lasted for about two hours. It was already getting darker, time to leave the park. 

What an incredible day again !

 

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Boy, you really had a good day... Mating tigers and then arrowhead's cubs! Very cool. 

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wow, wow, wow...Noor and Khumba mating!! What luck! And great play time with the cubs!! So envious...!

 

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Just stunning tiger pictures. Between your two reports amongst the best I have ever seen. Given your interest in Ranthambore , I wonder whether you have seen or own the large format coffee table book called Ranthambore- The Tigers Realm by Anjali & Jaisal Singh and Priyanka Gandhi published in 2011 with exceptional photographs taken from literally hundreds of visits they made from the 1980s to 2000s in the park along with lots of unique information on the park. I have a copy and enjoy reading it time and again. I think it’s long out of print - here is a description For anyone interested. https://www.sanctuaryasia.com/magazines/cover-story/7528-ranthambhore-the-tigers-realm-by-anjali-and-jaisal-singh-and-priyanka-gandhi-vadra-.html

 

Edited by AKR1
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Now that is really quality time with tigers, what an amazing day!

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On 6/13/2020 at 6:16 PM, janzin said:

wow, wow, wow...Noor and Khumba mating!! What luck! And great play time with the cubs!! So envious...!

 

 

@Treepol @janzin thank you, we were very lucky indeed

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On 6/13/2020 at 5:59 PM, Zubbie15 said:

Boy, you really had a good day... Mating tigers and then arrowhead's cubs! Very cool. 

 

@Zubbie15 yes, we had a very lucky day, thx

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22 hours ago, AKR1 said:

Just stunning tiger pictures. Between your two reports amongst the best I have ever seen. Given your interest in Ranthambore , I wonder whether you have seen or own the large format coffee table book called Ranthambore- The Tigers Realm by Anjali & Jaisal Singh and Priyanka Gandhi published in 2011 with exceptional photographs taken from literally hundreds of visits they made from the 1980s to 2000s in the park along with lots of unique information on the park. I have a copy and enjoy reading it time and again. I think it’s long out of print - here is a description For anyone interested. https://www.sanctuaryasia.com/magazines/cover-story/7528-ranthambhore-the-tigers-realm-by-anjali-and-jaisal-singh-and-priyanka-gandhi-vadra-.html

 

 

@AKR1 thank you very much for your kind words.

I have quite a few books about tigers and/or Ranthambhore but not The Tigers Realm. I'll certainly have a look.

 

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Day three, our second full day safari. We entered zone 3 via the main gate and within 5 minutes we had our first sighting of the day !!

It was 6.35am, still quite dark and we were with one of the cubs again, as if she had been waiting for us.

Again the Tiger Gods were very kind to us.

 

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Himmat knew what would happen next, so we drove to the lake.

 

A few minutes later, daughter number 1 appeared.

 

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“Quick, take a picture of the tiger with the lake and the fort, that's a classic Ranthambhore picture"

 

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Here comes daughter number 2

 

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Suddenly, both tigers growled and started running.

Far in the distance we saw a silhouette of another tiger ... here comes Arrowhead.

She disappeared during our sighting on the first day by the lake and now she decided that it was time to come back.

We didn't complain B)

 

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It was clear that both cubs had missed their mother.

 

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It was still early in the morning, I think around 8.00 am, and the sun began to rise.

The tiger family decided it was time to move on.

 

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At this moment there were many jeeps, too many jeeps, but it didn’t seem to bother the tigers at all.

 

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The tigers jumped over the wall right beside the main entrance of zone 3 and disappeared into the forest nearby the lake, ... time for breakfast B)

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After breakfast, we drove via zone 2 to zone 6 and apparently our luck was still not over yet.

 

The two icons T34 Kumbha and T39 Noor were still together. Yesterday, we saw them mating twice so we hoped for some further interaction today.

 

Our loverboy was very nervous growling, snarling, drinking, moving up and down, marking territory - he did everything - trying to impress Noor …

 

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… but she was not impressed at all and remained ice cold.

 

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Although she’s getting older, she’s still a beautiful tigress !

 

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T34 accepting his fate

 

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There she goes, maybe this his big chance.

 

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Nope, not today :(

 

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T34 couldn’t hide his disappointment and disappeared into the bushes.

 

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We followed T39 until she reached the riverbed, at that point we had to let her go.

 

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By then it was about noon, time to pick up our lunch at the gate.

 

In the afternoon, we decided to go to zone 4. On our way we had some beautiful other wildlife sightings.

 

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Zone 4 is occupied by T19 Krishna and her three, already adult and independent cubs (T111 Shakti – T112 Jam and T113 Pi).

 

Late in the afternoon we were alerted by some alarm calls but we had to travel a long distance.

We were not the first to the party.

 

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A male tiger lay down in the tall grass, quite far away.

 

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When he turned his head we could see that it was T112 Jam. We first saw him as a cub, back in October 2018 so it was nice to see him again as a full grown male tiger.

 

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As there were too many vehicles and our guides thought the tiger wouldn't move anymore, we decided to leave the sighting. 

 

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You are absolutely killing it (and me!) with these tiger sightings!! And awesome photos!

 

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These are incredible! Is February high season for tiger visiting? It looks very dry...what was the weather like?

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13 hours ago, janzin said:

You are absolutely killing it (and me!) with these tiger sightings!! And awesome photos!

 

 

@janzin thanks B), like I mentioned earlier, we were extremely lucky !

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12 hours ago, mtanenbaum said:

These are incredible! Is February high season for tiger visiting? It looks very dry...what was the weather like?

 

@mtanenbaum thank you !

 

Generally spoken I believe that the period Jan - April is considered as high season. May and June are also very good for sightings but you must be able to cope with the heat. 

The park wasn't dry at all. It rained a lot during the monsoon of 2019 (July - September) so as a consequence the vegetation was still lush and there was enough water everywhere.

Most of the pictures were taken in zone 3, which is quite dry and sandy the year round (except the lakes of course).

 

The weather early February was clear and sunny with temperatures of around 22°C or 72°F during the day.

The mornings and evenings however were (very) cold with temperatures of 9°C or 48°F. It was very cold in the jeep so we were very happy with our blankets, provided by the hotel. 

 

So I think March would be ideal : not too cold anymore in the morning and not too hot yet during the day. The tigers will be there for sure, you will just need some luck with the sightings :).

 

 

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Final safari day and it promised to be a challenging day trying to spot a tiger.

Arrowhead and her kids were hiding inside the forest, nearby the lake but impossible for us to reach.

 

In zone 6 the two tigers Kumbha and Noor had separated and T8 Ladli with her three little cubs, were only seen two or three times the last few weeks.

 

We started the day in zone 3 (as usual) where we witnessed a beautiful sunrise, birds, langurs, deer and many other mammals.

 

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Painted storks

 

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Crested serpent eagle

 

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Rufus treepie

 

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Stork billed kingfisher

 

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Pied kingfisher

 

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Long-billed vulture

 

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Egret

 

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Langurs

 

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Wild boar

 

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Crocodile

 

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Chinkara

 

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Spotted deer

 

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In zone 6 we really searched everywhere for Ladli and her cubs, but we couldn’t find them.

 

It seemed as if the tigers had taken a day off as only one tigress had been seen in the whole park during the morning drive.

A canter had spotted a glimpse of T105 Noori early in the morning, in zone 2.  So we tried our luck and drove to zone 2, hoping Noori would appear.

 

We searched everywhere but no luck.

It was getting late, our guides decided to do a final check and … al of a sudden, there she came from out of nowhere, T105.

 

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She was resting behind some rocks but we couldn’t get any closer as there were other jeeps in front of us.

Right beside the trees, there was a small, dried up riverbed, not really a path but we were saying to each other that it would be nice if she would stand up and start walking. She would come straight at us. A few seconds later, the unbelievable happened …

 

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As there were no cars behind us, we could very easily drive backwards and leave enough room for the tigress.

 

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She gave us one last look and then disappeared.

 

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What a fantastic way to end our stay in Ranthambhore ! Many thanks to Himmat and Rajkumar.

 

Next up : Varanasi

 

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