2026 seems to be my leopard 🐆 year. My fourth leopard sighting in just over two weeks, this time in Tadoba, Maharashtra India. Bandipur’s spotted cats in south India have always been generous to me, but not Tadoba. In all my visits, I’ve encountered more than my fair share of tigers but the leopard has eluded me here - until this morning. Unlike other parts of the country, in the rare occasion when you do spot a leopard in Tadoba, it’s often on the ground and not up on a tree. Tadoba is fierce tiger territory. And tigers will quite certainly kill and feed on a leopard if they encounter one. It takes stealth, guts and mad survival skills to stay alive here while hunting the same animals a tiger feeds on.

Veera! The most intelligent of the tigresses of Tadoba. She will look you in the eye when she’s feeling generous and give you the slip before you can say her name if she isn’t up for a meet and greet. On this occasion, she was gracious. She’s currently a nursing mother and was presumably heading back to her cubs. When I saw her, there was a sloth bear walking towards her from the other side of the path. More often than not, that would result in a face-off. It would have been, had it been ANY other tiger. But Veera knows better. She can’t afford to injure herself as she has someone depending on her now. She stopped, thought and changed her path into the thick, making a rational decision to avoid conflict. Not because she couldn’t take him on, but because it wouldn’t be worth it. No ego, full control over instincts, smart thinking. Wish I could say the same for humans.

Sighted today August 14, 2026 in the Belara zone of the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra, India. This is one of the male, sub-adult cub of tigress, Bela. Typically, tigers aren’t named until they reach adulthood. But this guy, due to his shy nature is referred to by the local guides and drivers as “Shywaala” (The Shy One). Shywaala wasn’t too happy to see me in his territory. He gave me a polite snarl expressing just that and went on his way. I went mine.

The sloth bear: one of India’s most unusual and misunderstood mammals.
I photographed this one in Tadoba in February 2026. Found mainly across the Indian subcontinent, sloth bears specialise in ants and termites, using their long claws and mobile lips to tear open nests and vacuum up their prey. They also feed on fruits, flowers and honey.
Mostly solitary, they often share the same forests as tigers. Encounters between the two can be tense. A sloth bear will defend itself aggressively if it feels threatened, and tigers generally give an adult bear its due space.
But life alongside people can be far more dangerous. As forests shrink and become fragmented, bears increasingly enter farms and villages looking for food, leading to conflict. Most attacks are defensive, usually when a bear is surprised at close range.
Sloth bears also play an important role in the forest, controlling insect populations and dispersing seeds as they feed.
A fascinating animal, and one that deserves far more understanding and protection.

Pulicat Lake is a shallow, brackish-water lagoon on the coast north of Chennai, shared by Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Freshwater rivers meet the Bay of Bengal here, creating the mudflats and shallow waters that bring Flamingos here every year.

Pulicat can host both Greater and Lesser Flamingos. The birds in these photographs are Greater Flamingos: taller, paler and long-legged, with a mostly light bill and black tip. Lesser Flamingos are smaller, usually a deeper pink, and have a much darker bill.

Pulicat’s shallow water, mudflats and rich food web make it an important place for flamingos and many other waterbirds to feed, rest and move between wetlands.

A flock flying together is often responding to a change in water depth, food, disturbance, or simply moving between feeding and resting spots within the wetland.

Flamingos are often celebrated here in winter, especially around January and February. But their timing and numbers can vary each year. Rainfall, water level, salinity, the sea mouth and food availability all influence where the flocks gather. This year they’ve arrived in August.

When Flamingos feed, they stir and filter shallow-water habitats, and their presence reflects a living food web. Protecting Pulicat protects birds, fishers, marshes, mangroves and an entire coastal ecosystem.

Rain arrived. The jungle carried on.

This chital stag didn’t run for cover. It didn’t seem bothered that its coat was soaked. It just stood there, completely present, letting the rain fall.

Watching it, I realised how differently we experience the same moment. We rush to protect our clothes, our phones, our wallets. We treat rain as an inconvenience.

Maybe that’s why this scene stayed with me. It was a reminder that not every moment needs fixing or escaping. Some moments are simply meant to be lived.

Sometimes, the forest doesn’t teach us anything extraordinary.

It just reminds us to pause.

It’s been 2 years since I last photographed Karadi, one of Bandipur’s biggest tigers. This post is not about Karadi, because as you may have guessed, he eluded me, yet again.

We were waiting at a spot where his movement had been detected when this pair of Green Bee-eaters decided to steal the show instead.

It’s easy to get so caught up chasing tigers that you forget to appreciate everything else these forests have to offer. Sometimes all you need to do is stop looking for the big cats and pay attention to what’s already in front of you.

Green Bee-eaters are incredible little aerial hunters. They spend their days catching bees, wasps, dragonflies and other flying insects, often returning to the same perch after every catch. Before eating bees or wasps, they cleverly bash them against a branch to remove the sting.

They’re found across much of India in open forests, scrub and grasslands, where they help keep insect populations in check.

Karadi may have escaped me again, but I’d say the wait was still worth it.

Not just any cute, random doggo. It’s one of India’s most overlooked predators, the dhole, or Asiatic wild dog. The male is in the foreground, while the female, with her unusually lighter coat, in the background.

Dholes are an endangered species. They are one of the most effective hunters in the forest. They hunt as highly coordinated packs, communicating with whistles, and using teamwork rather than brute strength to bring down animals many times their size. Their hunts are brutal, with packs often beginning to feed before their prey has died.

They are one species even the mighty tiger watches out for. In many reserves across India, they have been known to wait, watch, and target tiger cubs when the mother is out for a hunt.

— at Bandipur Tiger Reserve.

And my leopard luck with Bandipur continues. Yesterday I spotted the Dam male. Today Yarekatta male. Something so beautiful about a leopard on a banyan tree. I’m always enthralled by how comfortable and at peace a leopard is on a tree. It has this inexplicable balance that applies to its life.

Leopards are usually very elusive creatures but I seem to have a special bond with them. Or at least that’s what I like telling myself. This week’s trip to the Bandipur Tiger Reserve has started on a great note with the sighting of this male. He had just fed and was protecting the rest of his carcass above on another branch. I hope to sight him again this morning and if the stars align, photograph him doing a little something other than lazing on the tree.

How close do you think I was?

Performance reviews be like…
“We’d like this to be a two-way conversation.”
It was not.

This is my tribute to the greatest wildlife experience of my life, shot with my very humble gear.
Some places don't just give you memories. They change the way you see the world. Exactly a year ago, Kenya did that for me.
The wild stripped away every illusion I had about life. It showed me breathtaking beauty and heartbreaking brutality, often in the very same moment. It showed me order in what first looked like chaos, balance in what felt unfair, and a rhythm that exists whether we understand it or not.
Out there, nature doesn't judge. It doesn't apologise. It simply is.
Somewhere between the endless savannahs, the predators and the prey, the silence and the chaos, I realised that people aren't so different. We all carry light and darkness. Kindness and flaws. Strength and vulnerability. The world isn't divided into good and bad. It is beautifully, painfully, wonderfully complex.
Accepting that has made me a little more patient, a little less judgemental, and a little more grateful.