Strange behaviour

[Pralay Lahiry]

This tigress behaved in a very strange way. I was coming down from Bandhavgarh fort and just after taking the bend from the old fort door she jumped down on the road from an adjacent boulder. This was at a distance of about 30 feet when I took this snap. However things changed quite rapidly. She turned around and came towards my Gypsy. It was not a charge but rather a determined sort of walk. At 20 feet the ears flattened and the tail started twitching but still no charge. She just kept on coming. The driver revved the engines and moved forward a couple of feet. This had absolutely no effect. She did not slow down or charge. Just kept coming. At abot 10 feet we strated backing up but at the bend inside the fort the gypsy got wedged at the narrow turning. The guide peeped out and saw the tigress still coming. That’s when the driver (he has been driving in the park for 20 yrs) lost his cool and asked the guide to shut the fort door. Now, the door had not been touched for a few hundred or thousand yrs. It would have taken a number of men to budge that behemoth. However at the last moment the gypsy jumped over a rock on back gear and we climbed back. The tigress waited in the middle of the road for another half an hour before departing. I have no explanation why it did not charge or bolt.
P.S. After this first shot I had forgotten all about photography and lost my camera (I found it under my seat when I got back to safety). I feel humbled in front of such majesty.

Canon Powershot A550
1/125s
f/9.0
ISO 80