Since I felt very bad seeing practically every visitor to Kanha focusing exclusively on the tigers and not bothering about the other great sights there, my tiger pictures are going to be the last ones on this post….

Let me start with the BARASINGHA (“one with twelve horns”) or SWAMP DEER, of which there are the soft ground and hard ground varieties. Barasinghas are beautiful deer that can be found only in Kanha, and luckily, they are quite plentiful, and easily seen too. Equally luckily, they don’t often stray too close to the road, and visitors have a good distance from them, and the yelling and shouting doesn’t seem to disturb them…too much.

Here are a few shots of the Barasingha that I like.

“The Splash of Hooves”:

“The Kiss”:

Here's a doe, with her face showing, and then dipping into the water for the typical feeding behaviour: "Food and Water".... This photo shows the distance at which we generally saw these animals. Here the stag is roaring out his rutting call, and the doe, like many other young women in similar situations, is not impressed! And here's a shot of a Barasingha, literally getting a "High on Grass"... I certainly did not see as many GAUR as I see in the forests of Karnataka, but that may just have been because of the crowds there....here's a beautiful sub-adult... " mujhEy gaur sEy dEkhO".... There are plenty of CHITAL or SPOTTED DEER. Here's a photograph which goes against the usual tenets...no light on the animals...but I love it because of the way the shadows go..and this IS the way one spots animals, sometimes in the shade, sometimes in the light... "Light and Shadow"... Here's a handsome stag who has lost his antlers and seems to be doing Yoga to get them back... "Horn Please".... And here's one whose wish has been granted... "I get great reception on my TV".... We saw several WILD BOARS.... "Why Did the Wild Boar Cross the Road? He Wanted to Avoid Obelix".... including an entire family, with babies, feeding on a kill that some predator had made... "Family Feast"..... And here's one I was taking, of the intriguing patterns on the bark of this tree, when a wild boar walked past behind.... "Bark and the Boar"... There were plenty of LANGUR diverting us with their antics. They make for great photographs, with their silky fur and their bright eyes, and that funny wise look... "The Magus".... And here's "Looking up the family tree" (ooh, I *love* my picture titles!)... I am including the picture of the MONITOR LIZARD here, as I don't want to put it in the birds' post, and it was the only reptile we saw there. It was a she, and she was in the CROCODILE BARK TREE (you can see one of her claws as well), incubating her eggs. We were never able to see her getting in or out, though... "Lizard in the Crocodile"..... Then, of course, I have to come to Ol' Panthera tigris.... By the time we went to the spot where the sighting had been made, the four cubs, with which earlier visitors had seen this tigress, had gone, and she was taking her ease in the heavy undergrowth: "Tiger *Lion* in the Undergrowth" And here are two successive close-ups: "Closer...and Closer"....

And this was the first intimation we had of the presence of the tigress and her cubs. You can see the tracks of both the mother and her cubs…and the sad thing to note is, how many more jeep tracks there are, compared to the animals’….

“Our Tracks…and Theirs”…..

We also saw the pugmarks of this male tiger, who was sighted, having made a kill near the road, but since we were allotted another route, we never did get to see him, as our route (MURPHY! MURPHY!) diverged from this area shortly before the road where the sighting had happened.

In fact, in south India, I call all tigers Communist-footed, because all I have seen here are….Tiger Pug-Marx!