We saw a langur sitting on a tree at the edge of a cliff and calling in distress. So our driver pulled over and our naturalist walked towards the tree, eager to find out what was going on (visitors are allowed to alight from their jeeps at a few designated locations).

There he saw a leopard resting in the seven-feet-tall monsoon foliage to his left just about ten feet away from him!

On seeing him, the leopard got up and started walking away—crossed the track and disappeared into the denser foliage on our left.

Now you might ask—what if the leopard had attacked him? Leopards are shy animals that won’t attack unless injured or provoked.

Leopards live among tigers at Bandhavgarh National Park—but visitors rarely see them.

I saw this leopard on the 15th of June, 2018, just days before the park closed (the park closes during the monsoons from July to September).

Bandhavgarh was having some pre-monsoon showers that week—monsoon foliage had started to dress the terrain, and some trees had new leaves growing on them.

Our naturalist told us that this was only the second time that he had seen a leopard since October 2015.

This is the same leopard as in the second photo in this gallery—the rarely seen leopard at Bandhavgarh.

4:00 am—wake up call. Singh showed up with an open umbrella in one hand and bearing a tray of tea and biscuits under it. Bandhavgarh was having some pre-monsoon showers that week.

It had stopped raining by the time the safari jeep arrived at 5:00 am. Around 10:00 am the temperature had soared up to 42°C. We had not seen a single tiger since morning. Then suddenly without any warning—this tiger—”Banbehi-male-cub” appeared.

Banbehi-male-cub was around 2 years old at the time. His mother, “Banbehi-female” had littered a few days ago. Still, Banbehi-female would meet up with these subadult cubs from her previous litter (Banbehi-male-cub, and two female cubs). These unusual meetings continued for up to a month after the new litter was born.

The newborn cubs were sheltered in a cave somewhere, away from Banbehi-male-cub and his siblings.

The father of both litters is a large male tiger called Mangu. That’s the only reason why these meetings were possible—had the new litter been with a different male tiger, he would have certainly attacked Banbehi-male-cub’s generation or driven them away.

Tigers get their names from the area that they are first spotted in, or by their appearance, or behavior. Banbehi female gets her name from the Banbehi River that flows in her territory.

I find it amazing how animals and birds camouflage in their natural environment. This tiger is stalking a herd of spotted deer down below.

The stalking of spotted deer continued but the hunt was unsuccessful that evening.

Kamli—a GPS collared female tiger is the first tiger to litter at Sanjay Dubri National Park in recent times.

It was 11°C on a cold December night.

We saw this wild water buffalo bathing in the cold waters in the last light of the day. It seemed to enjoy itself—getting ready for that new year party which was in about ten days time.

Assam’s grasslands are home to nearly 95% of the world’s one-horned rhinoceros population. Dozens of rhinoceros die in the monsoon deluge every year. Natural disasters aren't the only cause of the decline in rhino numbers. Rhinoceros skin, nails, etc. fetch a fat price in Asian traditional medicine markets.

“Sariska National Park promised us the world but delivered zilch”, is a line that I came up with after five jungle safaris.

Now that’s not true—it’s a beautiful jungle—and we did see a crested serpent eagle. No tigers or leopards. Throughout the five safaris we saw fresh pugmarks, and langurs, spotted deer, nilgais, and peacocks all called out in distress a million times—but we didn’t see the cats that they could see.

I photographed this langur while it was in the middle of sounding a distress call—sitting high up on a tree, it can see a big cat. Sariska National Park is set in the Aravalli—the oldest fold mountain range in India. It’s such a dense jungle that tigers and leopards don’t need to show themselves in or around jeep trails.

The trails of Madhya Pradesh are sandy and soft—tigers love walking on them. The ones at Sariska are rocky and look rather uncomfortable for tigers to walk on. So one rarely sees them here.

I was desperate to have a super-telephoto lens ever since 2007. The options were limited (and expensive). I wasn’t happy with the image quality of zoom lenses such as the 50-500 mm (yes, that’s correct—fifty to five hundred!) But honestly, I couldn’t afford even the most ordinary lens of the time.

I got more desperate as the years piled on. Sometime in the year 2013, I became aware that Nikon’s older manual focus lenses (AiS lenses) are compatible with present-day Nikon DSLR cameras—and even Canon DSLR cameras—if used with an AiS to EOS mount adapter! Did you know that?

Now, these lenses don’t auto-focus. Still, some of these lenses are as good as any contemporary lens. So I purchased a Nikon 500 mm F/4 P IF-ED AiS mount lens (this lens was launched in 1988 and discontinued in 2002). I used it on my Canon 50D DSLR with an AiS to EOS adapter. This adapter had a focus confirmation chip stuck on it. So if I selected a single focus point on the camera body and brought it in focus, a red led light lit up—confirming that whatever is overlapping with that one point is in focus (how cool is that!)

The setup was fully functional except for two or three drawbacks—the lens swivelled around the camera body by about a millimeter. This was because the adapter didn’t replace the Nikon mount, it just sat over it.

The Canon 50D is rated at just 6.3 fps and its buffer is said to hold 15 RAW images—but out on the field, it was much less efficient.

So I purchased a used Nikon D300 camera. This was Nikon’s flagship DX-format sensor camera at one point in time. It’s amazing how much camera sensors have improved since—images made with an ISO rating of 800 or over on a D300 were useless due to high levels of digital noise.

One week later I traveled to the Thar Desert to photograph peacocks and Indian gazelles. This was one of the first photos that I made with the 500 mm lens on the D300 body.

This was a significant experience for me as a photographer.