Tigers of Bandhavgarh in summer.

When night temp in village Tala, that is close to Bandhavgarh National Park, stays around thirty degree celsius than one can imagine the misery of people in cities close to high rise buildings and tar road. Do animals suffer? Yes they do. When we saw a tiger panting around 0630 in the morning sitting under sal tree, she was feeling hot. All what she wanted to do was to cross over to swampy meadow and sit on wet grass. It took her more than 15 minutes to cover the distance that she could have covered in less than 90 seconds. Poor girl has to make a detour to reach the destination but that detour satisfied the hungry cameramen. Often it's Indian photographers who asks the driver to move more close to the Tiger.  On 23rd morning we were on elephant and a Tiger came out to walk on the road and a person having 70-200 lens in hand and 500mm on seat was asking driver to move close. Thanks to some other driver who asked the driver to let her cross. Some times I am failed to understand that what people wants? Are they only after close ups of the Tiger that they can have anywhere in the zoo. Some of the photographers with whom I work always comlaints that they don't get good "animals in their habitat" picture in Bandhavgarh any more. Why so? Have you ever thought on this? Yes Tigers do change their behaviour accordingly and so the hervibore. B2 a male dominant tiger of Tala range was a prime example of this. This Tiger was born in tourism zone and in those days we had very sensible drivers in the park. He became very confident with vehicles. But later he changed his behaviour. After seeing the vehicles on road he use to change the direction and walk away from jeeps. Kuttappan Mahavat knew his behavior very well so he stopped following him for Tiger Show. He was rarely a part of any tiger show in his last 2/3 of life. If he was caught than it must be because either a kill or in company of his companion. Drivers are to be blamed for this change in his behaviour. Hervibores in Bandhavgarh has changed their grazing time due to human disturbance caused by labour on foot and on bicycle. Someone just wrote an incident from Pench and similar things are happening everyday in Bandhavgarh and Kanha.  

    Spotted Deer and Sambhar comes to Chakradhara meadow in mid afternoon. In april we saw 40 Sambhar deer and more than 300 Spotted deer between Siddhbaba temple and Watchtower junction. (Picture above). They have changed their grazing habit due to this labour. Same thing with Tiger. Damdama tigress was sitting near road in nallah on 23rd May 2013. She was cleaning herself in presence of Tourist jeeps without paying any attention to them. After 15 minute or so she heard the bicyle noise, ears goes up and eyes focused in the direction of noise. this labour informed others and 3 more labour appeared to see her. She saw men walking towards her on foot and she simply melted away in the forest. 
I will finish this soon so keep in touch.