After seven kingfisher and two hours sleep I wasn't too well prepared for monday morning in tigerland. I had a banging headache and a parched throat as we headed off at 6:00am onto zone 4. Of all the zones, zone 4 is the wildest and most beautiful in so many ways, but it also has by far the worst roads, at times it is a huge effort just to try to hold onto the camera and stay inside the confines of the jeep, so after last night I wasn't best prepared for the effort required on this most demanding of zones. In some ways I am thankful it was a quiet start to Day 5 as I was in no fit state to do anything but complain about the roads and let everyone know how tired I was. We left early after no sign of tiger at any of the waterholes and I went straight to bed when I got back at 9:30am.
After a good sleep and a late breakfast we headed off again at 14:00pm in the blazing heat, this time onto zone 3, the area of the lakes, my favourite area in Ranthambhore and place where I have taken some of my best images over the last 12 years. As we were driving into the forest we bumped into a forest guard who told us he had spotted a large male tiger in a water pool near Tambakhan on his regular patrol around midday. Nafees told me to hold on and we raced through the forest at great speed in the hope that the he was still there. Arriving at the pool just a few minutes after receiving the news, we were greeted with the site of a large male tiger resting in the water. It was T7, the shy brother of T6, who is normally found nearer towards the Kachida Valley. He was very nervous and left the pool as we arrived and sat in the undergrowth just back from the water as I shot a few full length frames on my 400mm of this beautiful tiger with exquisite facial markings. After a while T7 moved off into the brush and we headed towards zone 3 and Rajbagh with T28, or the star male, in our sights after he was spotted there earlier this morning.
Less than 10 minutes after photographing T7, I was attaching my 1.7x converter to my 400mm and training it on the star male, who was sat regally in the window of the Rajbagh Palace. What luck!! He was surveying the lake from his elevated position as large numbers of sambar and spotted deer fed, blissfully unaware of his presence. I took as many different shots as possible using the 400mm with and without 1.4 and 1.7x converters, before finally settling on a position a long way back from the tiger but completely head on to the palace which made for a nice clean composition.
After about two hours he left this old maharajah's hunting lodge and moved off through the forest adjoining the lake, eventually coming out high in the hills above the lake, where he drank and sniffed the ground around a water pool on Mandook. So after four quiet safaris, and in a matter of just a couple of hours, we had seen two mature males in a very small area, making a total of 5 different individual males in just 5 days.
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