First, the gold that I struck in Bandipur. Gold comes in many forms in the forest. Here’s a GOLDEN DRAGONFLY:

And then there was the gold shower of the INDIAN LABURNUM, with its cascades of petals everywhere:

And of course, the gold of the sunset as we finished the evening safari, shot (with some difficulty) through the foliage:

Then come

GAUR, or the INDIAN BISON, were really plentiful this time. I had one fellow pose for me..."you want my great haircut?" "Or a slightly different angle?" "Would you like to meet the others in my family? Here's the Missus.." "And if you would like to see Junior, too...." The conversation with the gaur over, I wanted to say hello to this beautiful SAMBAR DEER, but in true "show-the-backside-to-deponti" jungle behaviour (I think all animals and birds have to sign some kind of bond about this as soon as they are born...they have some unspecified doom coming to them if they face me or my camera from up close) he quickly went off in the opposite direction: Then along came this handsome CHITAL (spotted deer) stag and posed with great aplomb;I clicked before he saw it was ME, and went off: LANGURS are always the picture of grace as they lope across the forest with their tail in the characteristic "loop", or sit around calmly. Here's the tale of a tail: The langur was feeding on leaves and after the heavy shower that we had, it must have been a "clean" diet! Bandipur is extra beautiful to me because of the murals at JLR. I revisited the LEOPARD that Sunni Dhairyam has painted so well: Then, of course, were the other mammals that I went to meet; here are two wild females of the most dangerous mammal species there is, displaying typical feeding behaviour: And two wild males, displaying typical snapping behaviour:

Had a wonderful time, saying hello to Bomma, Loki, Basavanna, Ganesh, and others, too….if only I had not had my wallet picked on the way to Bandipur, things would have been perfect…but..these things happen!