I’d gone on a visit Corbett for the first time in my adult life( I’d gone once before as a 2 year old) in 2018. We had been on the Safari for a while and apart from elephants, deer and some hens, the closest we got to seeing a tiger was some claw marks on a tree and some paw marks on one of the dusty roads.

The sun was setting and the ride back towards the exit was a silent one as the occupants of the jeep sat quietly having not spotted a tiger. I’d begun shooting a time-lapse video of the setting sun road while going through the tall grass section of the sanctuary. The picture above is a still from that video. In the meanwhile, the guide who was seated in the front of the jeep mentioned in passing that he heard the distress call of the deer in the plains. We city slickers were oblivious as to what this meant and continued doing our thing in the jeep.

As I focused on the stunning sunset, my friend who sat beside me(he’s also the drummer of my band and part of the reason why I have partial hearing loss in my left ear.) stood up and shouted, ‘THERE! TIGER! CROSSING THE ROAD!!’. Excitement in the jeep surged as lo and behold, we see a tiger around 200 metres ahead of us crossing the narrow road. Since I was making a time lapse video, when I turned my camera in its direction, all you can see is a microsecond of an orange blur re-entering the tall grass.

The jeep sped up and we reached the spot where we’d spotted the beast. We were told to remain dead silent and we obeyed. Peering into the tall grass on our left. I was the only one who had bothered to rent a pair of binoculars and it paid off because there in the bushes, I alone saw the tiger. Crouching. Stalking its prey. I even got to witness it chasing the deer before it finally vanished into even taller grass.