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

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

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.

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).

Meanwhile, this months issue of Outlook Traveller carried the article on my Narcondam Island expedition that I did earlier this year.

You can download the pdf of the article here. I really like how Outlook/Geo does the layout of the images with text and captions.

The night came in early and soon we were sailing in almost total darkness, but under the canopy of a million stars–the milky way above us. We had started early that morning on a small, private, sail boat and still were not in sight of our destination. As I settled down on the deck for the night, I could not help but think about Charles Darwin and his Voyage of the Beagle. Close to 200 years ago, Darwin with his crew went around the world in HMS Beagle and in his trip to the Galapagos islands, he was baffled by the diversity of species on each of the islands and sparked the theory of evolution in his head.

I realised I was going to an island like that. The nearest landmass to the Narcondam island is the main Andaman island which is some 114 km to the west. To the east is Myanmar. On an evolutionary time scale, these islands have been isolated for so long that no mammals have managed to reach these islands on their own. Of the birds that could fly, some have made it to the island and made their home here. But once landed, the birds have been quite content with the island and have stayed isolated from the rest of the world for thousands and millions of years. In this time, the species on the island have evolved into species slightly different from those on the mainland. This is where the theory of evolution kicks in. Over time, species adapt and change to local conditions and in millions of years, become a different species. The process of natural colonisation is probably still on.

One of our primary aim was to see the Narcondam Hornbill. This hornbill, which looks very similar to the Wreathed Hornbill, found in northeast India and southeast Asia, is found only on this island and no where else in the world. Many millions of years ago, either this island was connected to the mainland Asia via a land bridge or was close enough for these hornbills, being powerful fliers, to reach this island. But after that, they have remained isolated for so long that they have changed over time. Today they are much smaller than the Wreathed Hornbills and are visibly a distinct species.

But wait a second. If a big bird like the hornbill could have evolved differently on this isolated island, what about all other creatures like reptiles, amphibians, and plants. We had the right people on board to help find just that and I could barely sleep with the excitement that I would wake up to the sight of this island.

I woke up the next morning and realised that the winds had been against us and we were still many hours from reaching the island. Sometime around 10:00 h, we saw an inverted V on the horizon. The distinct shape of a volcanic island. An extinct volcano in fact. It took us 3 more hours to actually get close to the island.

The Narcondam island from a distance

As we approached the island from the south, we knew from reading the reports of previous expeditions that there were only two small stretches of beach to land. Rest was too steep and even if we could anchor, it would be very tough for us to get onto the island and go inside the forests. After we were close enough, we sailed towards to northeast corner of the island to find the landing spot.

Narcondam Island

We saw a Indian flag on the shore and some people came there to wave at us. Since this island is out in the ocean, the Indian Government setup a police outpost a few decades ago and a few people stay here on rotation, changed and supplied every month by the Coast Guard of the Indian Navy. This is how India stakes her claim on the island.

After dropping the anchor, we took a small inflatable boat “gemini” and went over to the island. We landed and realised there were 20 people stationed there to protect the island.

View of our boat “Emerald Blue” from the island

The island’s geography itself was quite fascinating. The island is a volcanic island. The volcano is now extinct. So the whole island is very loose, with rocks and ashy soil. When climbing up, one can never trust the ground for support as it just crumbles under your weight and the loose, rolling rocks will hit the person behind you. We were instructed to climb only by holding on to trees and other plants.

Volcanic rock on the coast

Over the next four days, we explored the island from dawn till dusk and at the end of the day got back to the boat to sleep. Though we were doing a lot of things as a team, each one was after something specific. T R Shankar Raman and Divya Mudappa were trying to assess the population of the hornbills, the state of forest regeneration, and were keeping a record of other mammals on the island. Rom Whitaker and Janaki Lenin were out looking for reptiles and amphibians on the island. Ajay Saxena from the forest department was exploring the island to understand the management issues of this unique island. Tasneem Khan and Umeed Mistry were diving around the island, looking for interesting corals and marine creatures. I was trying to photograph as much diversity of the island as possible.

The island now has a lot of rats that have probably colonised the place along with humans or brought in by the ships accidentally. We were also on the look out for goats which had been introduced earlier as a source of protein for the camp, but had run feral. The forest department following a very strong recommendation by Dr. Ravi Sankaran had removed a whole load of them. We were of the view that a few had escaped capture. We were worried about the impact they might be having on the plant regeneration but were happy not to find any evidence of goats. However, we do know that at least a few are still around as they have been seen by the police guards.

The highlight birds were the Narcondam Hornbills and the Pied Imperial Pigeons. It was the nesting time for the hornbills, so we found them both at nests as well as feeding at large fig trees.

Narcondam Hornbill (Aceros narcondami)

One of the fascinating things that happened was the encounter with ground birds. On one of the days, I was quite pooped climbing up with all my gear and decided to rest by a stream. I was almost having a power nap when I felt something poking my feet. I got up and realised it was a bird very similar to the Slaty-legged Crake which took fancy for a Velcro hanging loose from my sandals. It was surprised to see me but not scared and stood less than 2 feet from me. I was shocked. Normally these kind of birds are shy like hell and one has to try really hard to sneak up on them and here was one right in front of me. It didn’t mind me at all and kept walking around foraging. I tried to shoot, but the light was low and most of the time it was in the minimum focussing distance of my lens. I walked with it for a good half hour and meanwhile rest of the guys joined me and had a look. It didn’t look like any of the crake species that we find in India. So either its a new species to science or some other crake which is found in southeast Asia. It very closely matched the Slaty-legged Crake.

On another day, we came across a Chinese Pond Heron which would not fly away too. It stood right next to us, and let us shoot it with our 12 mm lenses. Whats with these birds you might ask ? One possible explanation could be that the island does not have or ever had any mammalian predators. So these birds grew up generations after generations without fearing anything and over time lost fear of large things moving around with two or four legs. This is a classic island ecosystem behavior. In fact, in some places like New Zealand, many birds have given up flight totally as they didn’t see a reason to fly. Instead of eating a little and take flight, they would sit down for a big meal and take a stroll afterwards. This theory does not hold fully as there are water monitor lizards on the island and they could and would prey on these birds.

We also found atleast two species of bats on the island. Since it was peak summer, we were not so fortunate with snakes and frogs. We however saw many different types of skinks and geckoes. Rom believes many of them could be new species again.

Bent-toed Gecko : Found in Narcondam (but this photograph is from ANET, Wandoor)

Every evening, we would jump into the water with our snorkels as the heat and humidity was too much to take. There were amazing corals around the island and according to our marine experts, the island had some of the best corals in Andaman islands.

Overall, it was a trip of a lifetime for me. Not only did I get to see the island of my dreams, but also was there with the right company and the whole process of sailing there was just perfect. I can safely say that this is one of the few island, not just in India, but in the world which is still intact to a large extent and I hope things will only change for the better on this island, if at all.

Well it turns out, this hornbill is endemic to this small little 6.8 sq km extinct volcanic island named Narcondam island between Andaman islands and Burma. Can you imagine? The whole species of a big bird like the hornbill (some people even call it a honorary mammal) is found in this tiny little island. Since then, the goal was set. Visiting this island and exploring this went into my bucket list. It took more than 5 years for that dream to come true.

It took more than a year of planning, applying for permits and constituting the team for this trip. Finally it was a small team of scientists, photographers and forest dept official. The plan was to spend few days on the island and assess the situation of the island, the endangered hornbills and also look at some of the other wildlife that this island holds along with all the coral and marine stuff around the island.

So here is the first of series of posts about this expedition.

Day 1 (12th April 2010)

All of us reached Port blair two days before to pack, plan and setup things for the expedition. We chartered a sail boat/yacht from thailand to go on this expedition. We left port blair very early and set sail. Since the winds were not favorable, we could not use the sail and had to use the engine which meant we could only do a speed of 6 knots. After few hours, we were out in the open ocean with endless horizons on all sides. Past lunch, we suddenly saw this pod of spinner dolphins playing in the ocean. We slowed down and the the whole pod came towards to boat to play with us.

See this video to know why they are called spinner dolphins and its quite clear that they were just having fun. I shot this footage with a Nikon D90.

A pod of spinner dolphins swimming with the boat

Bow-sailing: A very favorite activity of dolphins (thats my foot in the frame)

One of the dolphin breathing with its blow-hole

Only these two remained in front of us after a while

And the last one that left us and went away

We also came across a pod of Pilot whales. No great photographs as we saw them only late in the evening just after sunset. We reached the island only the next day afternoon. More about the island in the next post.

Update : Since many of you asked, here is the wallpaper version of the last image

Yesterday, along with two of my friends, I had been to BR hills. We left in the morning, reached BR hills by lunch time, finished some work and went to K-gudi (the tourism zone of BR hills) and decided to go on the evening safari. Two weeks ago, a mother tiger with 4 cubs were sighted near a water hole and we decided to drive straight to the place and wait there.

As soon as we landed up, a barking deer which was drinking water, walked into the understory and then started giving out alarm calls. Since half the time they give out false alarms, we waited hoping something would turn up. Then someone screamed “Tiger Tiger”. A cub came out of the bushes and slowly walked to the edge of the water. One more came behind it, followed by two more tiger cubs. We could not believe it. Four tiger cubs in front of you in a south Indian jungle. They came to the water, drank a lot, played in the slush for a bit and, one by one, just as they had appeared, disappeared into the bushes.

They were out for a good 10 min, but the mother never came out. We waited for an hour more, but there was no sign of the mother and it was time for us to leave. Personally I am so happy to see tiger in south India after more than a year and that too in my favorite place, BR hills.

BR hills has been one of those quite little gems hidden away because of which there is less tourism pressure and less corruption. It surely is one big bank for tiger populations and I hope it stays that way. A lot of people have been wanting this place to be declared a Tiger Reserve (at this moment its a Wildlife Sanctuary) but that will only ruin the place as a lot of money will be spent to ‘develop’ the reserve.

Photo-constipation:

It is what many ‘serious photographers’ suffer from as they have to edit the images. Its usually when after one trip, it takes three months, sometimes, for just a few images to emerge out!

I, for one, have been suffering from it the last few month. What about you ?