Alan was back to his usual self, enjoying his early morning coffee before our next safari drive. As we entered the park the pack of wild dogs were in the same location as last night. They walked along the road a couple of vehicles in front of us, crossed over and starting running through the grasses after another deer fawn. We followed for a little while, but as were heading to different part of the park today we left the chase for others to watch.

Today we were going to the Kisli zone, on the way we heard a few distress calls. We had stopped to watch some birds when suddenly we heard the distress calls of spotted deer not far away. As we reached the spot we saw pug marks and three deer stomping and giving warning calls. Then Andy spotted a leopard, it was 30-40 metres away from the track and very well camouflaged. The leopard gave us enough time for photographs before it vanished into the forest. As soon as he disappeared, we saw another leopard crossing the meadow at a distance, two leopards! 

As we waited for the usual formalities at the gate we were given some chickpea plants to have a chickpea snack. They were very tasty!

Snacking complete, we got down to the serious business of looking for wildlife and as we entered the park I spotted a different shaped animal across in the grasses. I pointed towards it and asked our park guide what it was and he said it was a jackal… I was like, umm, no, it looks more like a cat. We pulled up behind the vehicle that Yusuf was in and he confirmed it was a jungle cat! Our first ever sighting of this usually elusive cat.

We made our way to Baba Thega where a tiger and her two 10-month old cubs had been recently seen. We spent a couple of hours here watching the spotted and sambar deer coming down to drink from the waterhole. A few times the spotted deer would get spooked and call out, but at no time did the sambar deer call (if they call you can be 90% sure there is a tiger in the area). No tigers made an appearance, but it was a pleasant location to sit so none of us minded. Well, not quite all of us, our park guide announced we were leaving after about 45 minutes of waiting, but when Banhu said no he went into a sulk for the next hour, tapping his foot.

We finally gave up waiting when our park guide announced we had a 45 minute drive to get to the park exit and we needed to leave. There was a really strange eerie light as we drove towards the exit, the sun playing tricks as it started to set.

When got back to the park gate Banhu decided not to tip the park guide, a decision we all agreed with!

We quickly packed up our breakfast and made our way out of the picnic area stopping to speak to other vehicles we passed. A tiger had indeed been sighted and we were directed to its location.

When we arrived, there were about 15 other vehicles looking towards where there were two elephants with their mahouts. One had a male passenger riding in the ‘basket’, he was dressed too formally to be a ranger or tourist and we came to the conclusion he must be a park official because he was not carrying any cameras.

We were pointed towards where a tiger could be seen lying not far from a termite mound. An Indian gentleman in another vehicle said they had seen a tigress cross the road with four sub-adult cubs. We started looking into the grasses eagerly trying to spot more of them. In total we believe we saw three different tigers (tigers 14, 15 & 16 of the trip). The mother tiger was disturbed from her rest by one of the elephants and she jumped to her feet and growled at it.

The other vehicles gradually moved away heading off for their breakfasts. We stayed and listened for warning calls to see if we could judge which direction she was heading in. We couldn’t see her or her cubs, but she was a good distance from the trail as we could hear the warning calls coming from the forest across a grassed area.

We followed parallel to the calls along the trail until we came out at a T-junction in the trail. We looked to our right and another vehicle (not from our group) beckoned us to cautiously drive up the road. We were told to get our cameras ready.

Leaving a gap between our two vehicles the tigress appeared perfectly in the middle, crossing the trail. She walked into the scrub and towards us, we had to reverse to give her space. She briefly laid down giving us an opportunity to stop the vehicle and get a few shots before she got up again and disappeared into the forest.

The guide in the other vehicle mentioned it was likely the cubs would cross, but instead of waiting our naturalist/driver decided to reverse up the road to see where the female had gone. When we returned to the other vehicle we were told one of the cubs had just crossed, we missed it.

Time for our last drive in Kanha and we were out with Yusuf again. Our drive started with seeing two tree shrews. I just missed getting a nice head shot!

We stopped for a peacock displaying on the trail and a large herd of swamp deer.

Swamp deer or barasingha (meaning twelve-tined) - in the 1960s there were estimated to be less than 2,000 individuals in India. These are southern swamp deer, they have hard hooves adapted to hard ground in open sal forest. This subspecies survives only in Kanha, where the population is estimated to be 750 individuals. We counted 50 of them crossing the road in front of us!

Onwards and Yusuf received information that a dominant tigress had crossed the fire line and was going uphill. We quickly drove towards the hilltop and parked where he expected her to come out. After waiting for a few minutes, we heard the distress call of a peacock and spotted deer. The Tigress came out and turned towards us walking downhill. We had to reverse our vehicle for 5 minutes as she kept coming head on! We were fortunate there were no other vehicles behind us, as reversing all that way down hill would have been quite tricky if others were trying to get shots of her too. As it was, the other vehicles were the other side of her and they got many shots of her rear end with us in the background!

This was tiger number 17 of the trip. T27 aka 'Dhawajhandi female', along with her siblings, she spent her time as a cub in the Dawajhandi, Baba Thenga, Singarpur and Malkhedi areas of Mukki. Once fully grown she was successful in establishing herself in part of her mother's territory. Now aged 6 years, she produced her first litter late last summer (2017). While we saw her here other members of our group saw glimpses of her cubs at the Baba Thenga waterhole.

A super way to end our visit to Kana National Park, where in 2009, we had our first ever wild tiger sighting. As the sun started to set we returned to the lodge for our last dinner with Linda and Andy, our drive buddies would be heading back to Nagpur tomorrow.

We had a bit of rest this morning with the alarm going off at 6am, we repacked and went for breakfast… a real cooked breakfast (jungle omelettes all round) no sandwiches yay! We said our farewells to Linda & Andy and we all left the lodge at 9am.

This was to be a long day travelling. We made three brief comfort break stops and ate our packed lunches (knew those sandwiches would make an appearance again) in the car on the go.

We arrived at Satpura at 6pm as the sun was setting. We had enough time to shower and get our gear ready for the next day before we went for pre-dinner snacks, did the checklist and had dinner.