There is one group of plants, which supports the largest masses of wildlife in the world and also supports most of our human populations: grasses. This remarkable plant group covers a fourth of all the land on the earth. Almost 70% of our daily diet is derived from grasses. Rice, wheat, maize, barley, are all species of grass which have been cultivated since the advent of agriculture and selectively bred over the last 10000 years by humans.

Today, grasslands are under assault. They are among the most endangered natural habitats on earth and India is just about holding on to the last remnants.

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Many of you already know, but during most of last year, I worked on a series for National Geographic Channel called ‘The Secrets of Wild India’ along with Sara and Mandanna. The films is finally ready and will air early the coming week in India. It has already aired in the UK. Its a 3-part episode and the first part was filmed by Sandesh in Kaziranga and we shot the second two parts in Tadoba and Gujarat.

It has been a privilege to work on this production, especially the fact that David Attenborough has narrated it. Do catch the show and would love to hear what you think about it.

The year 2011 has been one crazy ride. I ended up spending most of the time in the field – photographing and filming across India, Africa and southeast Asia. This also explains the lack of updates on my journal the last few months. Below is the collection of some of my favourite photographs from the field.

The year started with a long filming assignment starting in Rajasthan and then Kutch in Gujarat. After filming there, we moved to Tadoba Andheri Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra, where we spent 2 months filming tigers. Then again back to Gujarat to film lions in the famous Gir National Park. Spending long periods of time in each of these places was very rewarding in terms of the individuals we were able to follow over time. Watch out for the film ‘Secrets of Wild India’, which will air sometime in 2012.

After the filming assignment, I spent July in Borneo, August in Anamalais and September in Kenya. The year ended with a personal trip to Assam and Arunachal Pradesh in northeast India.

Below is a selection of some of my photographs from these journeys

Some of the small hills in Rajasthan are excellent habitats for leopards and they are quite easy to see in human dominated landscape

A langur gives out an alarm call having sighted a leopard sitting on a boulder below

A beetle on the dunes in the Desert National Park in Rajasthan

Demoiselle Cranes in Keechan

Thousands of Demoiselle Cranes come to Keechan village during winter every year

A Hedgehog rolled up in defence on a highway

A Desert Cat kitten in Banni Grasslands, Gujarat

Desert Fox from Little Rann of Kutch

Desert Fox pups playing while the mother is out hunting

Flamingos in Kutch

A young male tiger from Tadoba Andheri Tiger Reserve

One of the tigers who would sit inside the bushes all day long and only venture out when all the tourists had left

Known as the Telia tiger, he was the dominant male in the area and had the best places of Tadoba as his territory

My most memorable moment in Tadoba was when this tigeress walked towards us, while we were on foot, setting up camera traps

Cicadas are sap suckers and excrete a spray of water. During summers this is a common sight in central India

A young male Lion in Gir

Lion cubs sit with one of the mothers as the other one goes out hunting

A lion cub sleeps in the shade of a tree

Lions in the shade of a large ficus

A Jackal tries to catch winged termites that emerged after a downpour

Lioness

A Koompassia tree in Borneo

Slow Loris, one of the small, nocturnal primates from southeast Asia

A Spider, with excellent camouflage

A male Orangutan in Danum Valley, Borneo

Tarsier – a small, primitive, nocturnal primate, Borneo

The Long-tailed Macaques enjoying a grooming session

Impatiens growing on wet rocks along a stream in the Western Ghats

Extreme close-up of veins of a dried leaf

Imago emerging

A stream in the Western Ghats during the monsoon

A close-up of Indrella ampulla — a snail endemic to the Western Ghats

A White Pelican joining a group of foraging Pelicans at Lake Nakuru, Kenya

A Masai Giraffe rests under a Balanites tree in Masai Mara, Kenya

One of the highlights of my trip to Masai Mara was the time I spent watching this playful family of Cheetah with her three cubs

Two of these cubs were later predated by Eagles

Cheetah hunts an Impala in Masai Mara, Kenya. This is probably the best picture I made this year

A tower of Masai Giraffes. Two of them are necking — a ritual to establish dominance

A female Southern Ground Hornbill forages in the grasslands of Masai Mara

Rains on the grassy plains of Masai Mara

A Stream Sapphire damselfly in Pakke Tiger Reserve

Two male Stream Sapphires try to impress the female sitting on the twig

The Himalayan foothills in Manas

Forest floor in Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary

Its not the orangutans or the colorful diversity of birds, neither is it the primates nor the hornbills. Its the giant trees that take your breath away in Borneo. You feel as if all the trees that you have seen in your life were Lilliputians and now you have come and bumped into Gulliver himself.

These trees are spectacular. One has to work really hard to see the whole tree. From the ground, the top of the tree either disappears into the canopy or into the mist, either way, the only part of the tree that you will ever get the see is the main trunk.

Divya Mudappa admiring the base of a massive Ficus tree growing on a dipterocarp

They look very still, but in the rainforest, they are working every second – for water, nutrients, light, and space, and to fend off a host of parasites and predators of all kinds.

But one amazing thing about Borneo is that, one can climb up and stare at these forests from the top — see the top canopy at eye-level, and still have canopy emergents towering above you. Climbing itself is quite an amazingly exhilarating experience and once again, you really realise and appreciate how tall these trees really are. Many biologists say that the true life in the rainforests is up in the canopy. From up there, you get a feel of the world view that the primates and hornbills enjoy.

View from the canopy platform

I’ve always found that in nature, trees are the most difficult subjects to photograph. Its very difficult to do justice to the grandeur of some of them. One of the most spectacular trees in the world is the Koompassia excelsa (also locally known as Mengaris) and on my recent Borneo trip, I had decided to photograph this tree. Koompassia excelsa is one of the tallest tropical tree species. In an undisturbed forest, its very difficult to see the whole tree. Most often you just see the trunks, while rest of the tree merges with the others in the canopy.

Base of a Koompassia tree

But if you find one in an open or logged forests, you really can feel the size and scale of the whole tree. We found this particular one in Tabin Nature Reserve, right by a road and on a night safari. It was amazing to see this tree against the sky full of stars. So to photograph it, I setup my camera on the bag and took a long exposure shot of this tree.

I thought something was missing and thought, it might be a good idea to light up part of the tree. So I decided to Light paint the tree. Divya and I panned the trunk and the canopy with a LED torch light while the camera was on its 30 sec exposure.

Light painting of a Mengaris tree

The clouds were building up and in one of the subsequent tries, a lightning lit up the horizon and created a very dramatic effect. Every time I look at the photo of this tree, it transports me to Borneo.

Koompassia tree light painting with lightning lighting up the sky

As a photojournalist, when do you capture a scene the way it is vs capturing it as the way you think it is.

Let me explain

Last evening, I was driving in the buffer area of TATR and came across two women collecting Tendu leaves (leaves of Tendu are used to make indian cigarettes) in the forest. I stopped to take their photos. One of the lady’s name was Shakshi and I was trying to take her portrait with the leaves. Obviously since it was a stranger, who suddenly landed up, she was stiff and expression-less. I asked my guide Santosh to tell her to smile a bit for the photo. She did not right away, but after asking her twice, she finally did smile and I took her photograph. I took some more shots of them collecting the leaves, thanked them and left.

Sakshi, before I asked her to smile

As I was driving back, I was thinking about Shakshi and the photo that I took of her. Is she happy that she is a tribal? Does she think she lives a happier life than people in the urban jungles? Does she feel marginalized in the forest? Which of my photograph, represents what?

Sakshi, after I asked her to smile

Shakshi is from the Gond tribe, living inside this forest. What she was doing might be illegal as per our wildlife laws, but these have been the forests of her ancestors and she makes a very marginal living out of selling these leaves

There have been endless debates between biologists and social scientists. The former contend that tribal relocation from the forests is fundamental to the conservation of wildlife and say most tribes prefer to move out, the latter argue that the social costs, which relocations impose upon oustees, outweigh any benefits that people-less nature provides and people are happy to be living inside the forests.

I cannot help but think that the first photograph supports the case of the former and the second one for latter. Have I distorted the story by asking her to smile for the camera or is she really a very happy lady? Have I imposed my views about her in the photograph by asking her to smile? (though I fight for wildlife, I believe historic injustice has been done for the tribes and they must be respected and made part of the conservation process).

I do not know the answer, but its scary to know that a portrait is not just a portrait.

Today marks a month since we have been filming in Tadoba Andheri Tiger Reserve in Central India. Filming has been relatively slow, but as the summer picks up, we are hoping the sightings of wildlife would too. The colors of the forests during summer in unbelievable.

We are currently in the grasslands of Velavadar National Park filming for Wild India. We have been getting good shots of the blackbucks lekking and an amazing array of other animals. From wolves, hyenas, jackals, jungle cats to nilgais. We have been waiting at a hyena den the last few days but have not managed to see it at all.

Yesterday, while driving around, I saw one hyena in a new area in the grasslands. Allah Rakha (our amazing guide) and I decided to investigate and searched around the area in the evening. We came across a den in the middle of the grasslands. We were not really sure if this was an active one or even if it was the den of a hyena. To find out, I decided to deploy a Trailmaster Camera-trap along with my old DSLR.

Since its just flat area, I did not have anything to tie the transmitter and receiver to, so in these cases, I just keep them on the ground, align them and set it up. I set it up about 8 m away from the den, not to disturb the animal if it was using it, but would get it if it decided to venture out away from the den.

Setting up the trap takes some time and I was struggling to align the beam and also setting up the camera and flash. We heard something move and as both of us looked behind, the hyena came out of the den (we didnt realise it was in the den all along) and was watching us with big ears pointing towards us, wondering what we were upto. I have never seen one so close and all of us got startled. It decided to jump out of the den and walk away slowly. I did not have my big lens, else I would have got an amazing photograph.

We decided to set it up anyway and left the place. This morning, I went back to pick up the camera-trap and was shocked to find my receiver was not there. I looked at the photos and voila, the hyena did come and somehow took an active interest in the receiver. It snifffed it a couple of times and decided to play with it and chew on it.

Hyena chewing the receiver

Some more playing around with the receiver

What I did not understand was this: Why was the camera still photographing when the alignment was clearly off?

After looking at the timestamps of the images (all of them are few min apart), it looks like the camera triggered each time the hyena tossed the trap in such a way the beam got re-aligned with the transmitter. In a funny way, thanks to the hyena’s playfulness with the receiver, I managed to get these shots.

Hyena taking away the receiver

There goes my $400 equipment. I did not find it anywhere around, so mostly the hyena has taken it into the den. Lets hope its not munching on it, thinking its some kind of a bone. Anyone coming from the US who would be willing to pick one up for me?

(The poor quality of the image is because the hyena was beyond the range of the flash and I had to be highly cropped the image and get the details in photoshop).

A new year and a new wildlife production. This time, we are working on two of the three part series named Wild India for National Geographic. The theme is to showcase India’s diversity along with how wildlife copes with extreme conditions. One episode deals with the annual flood in Kaziranga, one on prey-predator dynamics at drying waterholes in central India and the last one is on extereme heat of Gujarat, highlighting lions and animals of the arid region of Kutch.

Just landed in Ahmeadabad and pigged out on amazing Gujarati food. Our first stop is Kutch and hope to give regular updates on the film.

The film that we worked on last year is finally airing on TV. If you are in UK, make sure you catch it. It will air in India later this year.

I am just a poor boy
Though my story’s seldom told
I have squandered my resistance
For a pocket full of mumbles such are promises
All lies and jests
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest

…

In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of ev’ry glove that layed him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
“I am leaving, I am leaving”
But the fighter still remains

- Simon And Garfunkel | The Boxer

Another day, another leopard bites the dust. When will we start treating them as individuals and not as numbers. These eyes reflect… the fear.. the pain…

But hope the fighters will continue to fight… but with more support and understanding from us.