Young Sub-adult Tusker @ Masinagudi

[Murugan Anantharaman]

There's this very interesting safari route at Masinagudi which has the longest safari duration of around 2.5 hrs. While the route has a pucca tar road, the jungle is quite amazing. There's a huge flip side though, if you happen to be within the first few jeeps taking this route in the morning safari then its the best you could have asked for because soon after 8am this route sees a jeep crossing you every 5 min which makes it super crowded. In the early hours the jungle is quiet(vehicle-less) and has quite a bit of movement, we almost missed a tiger by a few seconds, could only see the tip of the tail and then it was gone. There are quite a few elephants also and we saw this young tusker which was part of a herd. The others in the herd may have been nearby as we could hear more noises in the dense vegetation. The young tusker was pretty playful that morning and was enjoying breakfast.

Nikon D7k, f/5.6, SS 1/320, ISO 2500, 420mm (300f4+1.4x TC), full frame. Didn't have the time to change lenses, hence the frame looks a bit tight.