Wakeeta's cub killed by a Tiger.

Wakeeta has the most poor territory in Tala Range of Bandhavgarh National Park. Only meadow she have is Lakhumar which is of no use for any animal to graze so that doesn't help her to find the prey. She survives mainly on cattle. Often she is reported to be in Matri ji's Bada on a cattle kill. She lost her two cubs in Nov 13 and death of cause was Starvation. When she kills a prey out side of the park she leaps over the fence but her cubs can't leap over so they remain hungry for days. One of the cub was even put in a small enclosure to be fed but he died later.
Cub was killed behind Amanala camp near the fence. When I was looking at my pictures I found that this cub tried to defend himself but he was too young to fight with an adult / sub adult tiger.

  

Vijya's cub killed by a Tiger in July.

It has become a great mystery. Which tiger was found dead in first week of July behind Forest Rest House in Tala?
In Jan 2014 an young male Tiger was sighted for three days in Hardiya area. After identifying this young male we found this was one of Vijya's male cub. So where was he living for all these days?
Some forest labour did tell us in Nov, Dec and in Jan itself that a male Tiger was seen by them in Chakradhara but because we never got hold of any photos so we could not confirm his identity.
Forest Deptt says and believes that the cub got killed was male and remaining female cub is living at Fort plateau.
If she is living at Fort plateau then some time she should have come down in Chakradhara meadow. By now she is about 28 months old, sexually matured, then why she is not looking for mate? 
Fort plateau alone can not feed a Tiger? There is not enough prey base. Tigers living in Chakradhara do visit Fort plateau for a day or two but comes down regularly. 
There are so many questions on this issue.
It's a minor mistake but it can be corrected. It looks like as forest deptt is not interested in Data records. I am told that now they recognize them as a Tiger. I agree with that too but minimum one should know about the male and female population ratio in the park.
Why Rajasthan Forest Deptt recognize it's each and every Tiger by No's and name? They are using Tourism as a Toll much better than any one else in the country.
Everyone accepts this theory that if you know an animal by name then you follow news about him and becomes more concerned when you don't get any news about him. As it use to happen here with B2 and Charger.
Here is a picture of this Tiger taken on 17th Dec 2012 while he was walking in Chakradhara meadow with his two other siblings and picture in the bottom was taken on 23rd Jan 2014 while he was crossing the road near Hardiya.
Anyway. This Tiger is well alive and kicking for his survival in his fathers territory where his two other cousins are also putting pressure on his father. Poor Shashi / Bamera is getting injured here and there by these youngsters. They are too many for him to fight.  

     

Second visit to our place of Mr Peter Th Mann.

Mr Peter visited Bandhavgarh last year with Nature Images Tour and stayed a week longer. At that time only he decided to visit the park again in 2014 so he was again with us for a week in January.
Sightings were poor in Jan due to several reasons. Apart from rain the Ghost Tiger also disturbed Tulsi and her cubs.
One day we found Tulsi and her cubs sitting out side of park boundary. Still don't know why these chain link fencing are put because they do not serve any purpose. If they are there to stop cattle from coming in then Tigers goes out and kill cattle. Man leap over the fence to take bamboo and Timber for their need. Many pugdandee's (Human trail) can be seen in and around Bhitri. So practically they don't serve any purpose. This picture of Tulsi and her cubs proves it. That day they killed a cow and a buffalo.

Later on next day when they were feeding on cattle, that was dragged in by the forest deptt, 4 labour walked in literally to see the tigers. Everybody was thinking, What is this happening in presence of tourist vehicles. Where we are? Is this a National Park? But there was no one to answer these questions and tourists left frustrated.

Jaya sighting was good. We were told that she was seen in this area around 4 PM.  We were returning home so we decided to wait for few minutes. No call or any other sign so we started moving and there she was walking towards us.

 

Peter ward and family arrived with seeing wet land all the way from Jabalpur to here. Rain and wildlife viewing doesn't go well together. In an overnight sightings goes down. They had two good sightings of Tigers in the park but even when ground were moist Sloth Bear were hiding. 
Weather was again not very good when Fiona Monks and Nicholas Smith were here. We had very foggy mornings. It was such a thick fog in Rajbehra that we couldn't see animals standing in meadows. Visibility was about 15-20 feet.
But the best thing happened when Peter th Mann saw a Tiger in Hardiya. Mr Anand from hyderabad was also there and they all were confused about the identity of this Tiger. We were not in the jungle that morning but in afternoon Mr Anand asked Kay about the ID of this Tiger and when we got pictures a surprise surprised us.
Negative results were shown after matching that picture with Wakeeta's cubs but when Kay checked it with Vijya's cub a doubt aroused, Is he the male cub of Vijya? But male cub was killed by a Tiger in July as it was confirmed By Mr Neil Gogote, Mr Gyanendra from Tiger Den and Mr A.K.Sharma retd S.D.O. B.T.R.
We sent the pictures to everyone we knew and got the same results.
Everyone said that both pictures are of same Tiger.

Mystery is not solved yet. Which was that Tiger who found dead on 4th July is the question. Was he living at Fort hill and thats why his sightings were minimal. Some people did saw a male Tiger in Ghodademon and Khidki area but we never got hold of any pictures from them so never know which male it was.   

Wakeeta

Winter mornings in Bandhavgarh are cold and with no tiger sighting in early hours it feels even more colder.We had one such morning last year on 5th Jan. You don't see much Deer or Monkeys in morning hours till sun really comes up and warm up the air. With lots of money in the budget and wrong policies of the management that demands the patrolling has put too many labour on park roads. These labour are major disturbance to the wild life. This disturbance is so big and effective that most of the animals have changed their habits. Now in early morning hours you don't see deer in any of the meadows of the park. Chakradhara has a constant presence of labour on bicycle and so the Lakhumar, Rajbehra and Bathan.
We were first to leave Hardia so we could have a dust free ride in the park. We heard few alarm calls at behind Lakhumar meadow but that did not produced any results. It was probably the presence of village dogs that scared the deer. 
Rampur hill was as silent that day as ever before. There was hardly any sign of any movement of any tiger in the jungle today. 
When we almost lost all our hopes of Tiger sighting for today a faint alarm call of a deer raised our hopes. 
A tiger was walking away. She was Wakeeta. She set her clock well. She knew that this the time when there wont be anybody on road. She mean Bicycle not jeep. Tigers are more scared of a man on bicycle than people in jeep. 
We followed her few meters and then suddenly she started sniffing a scratch mark on the ground. It was more than a day old, but she could smell it well and shown the flehman behaviour. It was her partner Shashi who walked here yesterday and left his scent mark on the ground. 

   
She followed her route and sprayed every where. Later in the year we found out that at this time she was already pregnant and delivered her cubs in mid to late March.

Rangeela Rajasthan

in last November I spent a fortnight with some very nice people in Rajasthan. Jaisalmer was our first destination. Here I met The Lady Ms Meghna of Nachna Haveli. She has transpired this small Haveli in to a beautiful place. Her personal Touch was seen everywhere in the building. Everyone was praising the stay at Nachna Haveli. I wish if they had some control outside of their Haveli but one can educate those shopkeepers to keep the area clean. No foreign tourist wants to see garbage around. They are not use to of it and it's hard to digest the habit of throwing the garbage on street. Walking in some of Jodhpur gullies can ashamed any Tour Guide of the country. We walked in some of the most filthiest gullies of Jodhpur.   
It was hard to keep people busy for whole day in Jaisalmer. In my opinion Jaisalmer, Jodhpur and Pushkar are the places of Hippy Era. People keep on coming back to same place made them popular on Tourist circuit. I met few people who are visiting Pushkar since 70's only because at that time they spent months here and now they visit only because they knows the place better. It is all word to mouth kind of job they are doing for promoting few destinations in the country for Tourism Industry. Now present marketing system has taken over and we see more tourists than ever at these sights.
We were looking for a picture in Jaisalmer and that kept us busy for most of the time. Climbing on hilltop or walking for sunrise pictures was great.
Other interesting place in Jaisalmer is dunes at Sam village. We stayed at desert Dungri and that was a mistake. There services are downhill in a year itself. I wont suggest that place to anyone ever.
Blue city Jodhpur was no different than last year. Although we were there just after Diwali but still finding nice blue houses was a tough job. People are friendly and many group members were invited us in the houses for Tea.State Archeology department in Rajasthan is not a Tourist friendly organisation anymore.
Pushkar was as colourfl as before. Only thing that changed the mood of Pushkar was begging. Now every person big small  finds himself poor in front of Photographers and demands money in advance. This was not before. If you starts paying as per their demand then you will find yourself more poor than them within a day. Even money was demanded for photographing camels. Too many photographers in such a small place has created this situation. Normal blief is that photographer earns lots of money from there photos but real truth that all those pictures can not be published through an agency until unless they have release paper. No one carries a model release form in their pocket, minimum I have not seen anyone carrying it.

Wakeeta

After a long long time we saw this kind of fog in Bandhavgarh. Chakradhara was covered in fog and fort hill or watch tower at Bathan junction was not visible at all. We did not see any animal till we reached Jhilki Nallah at Bathan. Ugly dead tree was looking most stunning in dense fog at Rajbehra.
Jaya and four cubs were seen at Rajbehra yesterday munching a Christmas meal of Wild Boar. We joked about Tigers that they all 5 must be sleeping on anicut bank so leave them till the sun comes up.
There were some nice photos of Foggy trees in meadow.

When we lost almost all the hopes of sighting a Tiger today morning, Wakeeta obliged us with a stunning sighting. If Rajbehra was empty then so the Mirchhani and so the Tamaria. Pushpraj, the male cub of Wakeeta from previous litter, has started following Tulsi in search of some meals. On one such occasion last time he got some beatings from his father but some boys never learns. So he was doing the same thing again and this time Tulsi herself told him to behave.
We passed Tamariya water hole, where once Andrew Parkinson saw two cubs playing in the water and deleted most of the pictures because he didn't liked the man made bank in back ground.
We saw a hand waving for us to come to their side. We slowly reached there to see a Tiger coming out of the forest. This was happening about 150 mtrs away from that famous house near the park road.

She came out on the road and soon some smell on a tree draw her attention. She decided to check it. That's what we wanted. In touristic terms she was far far away from us. We are really appreciate the behaviour of that driver who was seeing her before us for giving her a wide space to feel free. She sniffed the tree and knew this is not from herself but her rivals smell. This spot is basically not in her territory. She is in Tulsi's territory. After realising this she did not even thought of doing any spray marking on this tree but simply slipped away in forest to move in to her own kingdom.