Posts by: Kalyan Varma

My week long attempt to capture the King Cobra nesting behavior has been unsuccessful. Waiting for action This place is just outside a small town named Thirthahalli, inside a forest plant nursery. The den itself is right next to the Tunga river, inside a bamboo clump. We had a small open area in the front, where we could pitch out tent, keep all our cameras ready etc. The experience was really tough. Since snakes are sensitive to movements, we had to sit still all day and the place was infested with all bity ants. Male Cobra checking us out For…

My first day with the king went quite well. I sat in clear view in front of the pair all day (9 hours straight) with my cameras. The female was mostly in the borrow and the male spent 9 hours of the day staring at me. He tried to mate with the female in the middle and they were in this head-over-head position for quite sometime, till the female got bored and went back to the den. The king cobra seems to have a thing for watching things around him. He kept his eye on us most of the day…

Well as many of you have guessed, I’m here in western ghats, trying to film the mating and nesting behavior of King Cobra in the wild for the first time. After a long day’s drive, I only got to have a glimpse of both the male and the females this evening. Right now, the female is in the den and the male is sitting inside a clump of bamboo right outside. And I’m posting this from my tent which is 10m from this bamboo clump. The King Cobras are generally not known to be active in the night, but I…

With this new job, I rarely get to decide my schedule. Its the animals and weather that decide it for me. I just got a call this evening about a chance to film one of the most deadly creatures in the world. Just packing my bags and am off first thing in the morning to the western ghats. If I can get it on tape, this will be the first time anyone would have filmed this creature’s behavior in the wild. Yes, I’m a bit scared, but I’ll have an expert at hand. More about it when I get back…

The last 10 days were really hectic as we finally started our shoot for the BBC documentary. We spent a day in Mysore and the rest in Bandipur, waiting at the waterholes for the animals to turn up mostly. Wildlife film making is atleast 20 times tougher than photography. The sound needs to be there, everything on heavy tripods, cannot hand carry the cameras and lenses and one always needs a crew. Working from 4:30am till midnight did not make it any easier. Alphonse Roy (Probabilty India’s best wildlife film maker) and Harry Marshall (Our producer and director from Icon…

Joy The short trip back to the grasslands was very productive and I was able to trek around a lot easier this time around. I’ve had an amazing sighting of a Jungle cat and wild dogs with pups. I’ll try to process those pics as soon as I find time. Meanwhile, I’ve uploaded the last trips photos onto my gallery. The person in the above photograph is Kapilan who is one of the main forest guards over there. He’s standing at the edge of Kerala and Tamil Nadu starts down the vallery from where he is standing. Infact most of…

Had a lovely relaxing weekend for a change. I was in the city and didn’t have meetings/work to attend. Managed to see the movie – namesake. Very well done movie. Leaving for Eravikulam again tomorrow on a quick trip to close the camp there for now. We will resume searching for new species once the monsoon starts. Picked up MotoRazr V3i again and I’ve already dropped it twice. I promise to update my photo gallery as soon as I get back from this trip.

I eventually did not find my cellphone and I spent some time last night researching on the latest phones. I was considering the Treo or Nokia R61, but looks like I’ll just go in for my old phone – MotoRazr V3i So last night I had this funny dream. I was at this photo expo and I was at the Nikon stall. They were showing off this new Treo handheld which could connect to the Nikon D200 and do all kinda fancy stuff. It could operate the camera via the Wifi adapter and you could control the whole camera remotely….

Lost my cell phone tonight. It feels like shit

A 30 min long exposure at eravikulam, facing south towards Anai mudi.