Tiger in Forest VIP Guest House

[Praveen Siddannavar]

Imagine a young female tiger walking straight into the forest VIP guest house, how can one react? I was fortunate to document this live and obviously this can happen only at Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve. It was past 8am on chilly winter morning, we were looking for the Ranger and in search of him we reached his office located adjacent to the forest VIP guest house. The Ranger wasn't available and my cousins who were in the other gypsy had missed the route. So we decided to wait for them, after few minutes we thought we will take a round and return back here. As we exited out the forest office gate, I suddenly whispered Tiger, until then none of them in our gypsy had seen it including our driver and guide.

It was a young female referred to as Pandherpouni female. Just to give you a quick back ground, the Pandherpouni Tigress had littered 4 cubs who are now moving to into adulthood, unfortunately the mother died recently and the official reason for her death is a snake bite. Now her cubs are almost separated and marked their own territories, sad but a true story of 4 growing cubs leading such a tough life without mom.

As we spotted this tiger we stopped our gypsy at a distance, however this female fearlessly walked head on towards us. When I first took a shot she was almost about 40M away, later she got in too close and since our gypsy was on the road at the last minute she change her route and started walking towards the guest house. Imagine there were couple of sweepers who were doing their morning duty of sweeping and didn't notice this tiger walking towards them... more images and narration coming up shortly, until then enjoy this lovely young lady.

Camera - Canon 1D Mark IV, Canon f4 500mm
EXIF - ISO 800 Av 4 Tv 1/1000sec EC -0.3, Sub dist 40M, almost full frame
Date - 25th January 2013 at 8:40am
Location - Tadoba

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

Good image. Nice preamble. Sad to hear about the missing mother. Warm regards to the young tigress and the photographer, Praveen Bhai.

The motherless tigress proceeded with courage and conviction to inspect whether the so called VIP Rest/Guest house was constructed strictly in accordance with law of the land !

In the Sundarbans T.R, a tigress had to intervene one day at around 3 P.M during Mar/Apr,2010 when some concrete construction was coming up at Sajnekhali in the buffer zone but within the Tiger Reserve. Mind it, it was a Sundarban Tigress ! Full stop to further construction till Apr 2012 when we last visited.
Thanks for sharing.SaktiWild

[Mrudul Godbole]

It seems the tigers in Tadoba have become quite fearless and used to humans. Nice pose and good eye contact. Look forward to more in the series. Thanks for sharing.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

There is such a huge difference between the Sundarban tigers and the rest. In other places photographers chase the tigers as if they are chasing cats and dogs and in Sundarbans like a zoo and in Sundarbans the tables are turned. Its the human beings who are caged. :)

Nice image. Wish the road was not tarred. It reduces the aesthetics as well as helps in vehicles driving fast and deaths of wildlife.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Murugan Anantharaman]

Lovely image Praveen. I have heard that tigers frequent places close to the frh's in Tadoba but just now got to see an image. I will be in Tadoba from friday and this image is a good precursor to that :). Thanks for sharing.