" Munna"

[Mangru Minz]

Early in 1st week of this month visited Kanha and Pench tiger reserve with my family after a long gap. I am lucky to spent more than 30 minutes with dominant male tiger "Munna" in kanha and it was a first tiger ever I have seen in wild. I took two safari on 3rd April .Morning safari was on kisli zone ,we started early as soon as safari gate open at 6.00AM, as we went inside first we saw pair of honey buzzard busy enjoying morning breakfast with honey comb, proceeding further found wild boar very near to road side, just ignoring us or may be very habitual of human presence ,It was so close that my 300mm attached with 1.4x tc was too long to capture full image, I took 2/3 snaps and we proceed further, as usual we came across spotter deer ,peafoul, gour etc and come back for breakfast. After taking breakfast we proceed again , I was taking images of whatever we came across, it was already 10.10 AM our driver and guide were heading towards the returning path ,bad luck , no tiger sighting , I was little disappointed but still I hope we have another safari in the evening in Kanha zone, so I said let us go. After moving little further I saw 2/3 gypsys which were moving ahead of us 50/60 mtr apart stopped , and suddenly my elder son started murmuring tiger, tiger and yes 'Munna' appeared gracefully in front of us from left , My heart beat goes up, he was very near to us ,I do not know what to do my 300mm prime was too big to capture , my ef-s 17-85 with 500D was not working on any mode, our driver stop our gypsy and we waited to move it further, but it moved only a little and sat down on the road in-front of us. I managed to take few images and we were waiting for any movement but he did't move . We are in pressure because of getting late at safari gate, there was no way out, our driver told this is the only route we can reach early, if we move back and take another route we will reach there after 11.00 AM. So we waited there for movement of his Highness and we are started thinking how to make it. We along with 2 safari start/stop engines, after trying 2/3 times finally he got up and moved away at about 10.56 AM . We reached safari gate at about 11.25AM and we all three Gypsy's ( Driver, Guide and Us) had given written explanation to the forest authority for coming late. It was great experience. First tiger image taken by me, .
Canon 40D, 300mm,Av mode, f/3.2, f/500sec, Ec:-0.3, full frame Image