These are a few pix from a 9 day trip to the tiger reserves of Pench and Kanha in Madya Pradesh, India.

I travelled with Naturetrek in March. The weather was unusually hot (37 to 40C) for the time of year.... and very dusty.

Pench is mainly Teak forest, whereas Kanha is mainly the more densely growing Sal forest.
The teak trees had shed their leaves, but the Sal only loose their leaves for about a week in February, so were freshly green.

We spent two days in Pench without seeing a tiger, followed by 4 days in Kanha where I did see two females, although both were heavily disguised as bushes.

We did, however, see lots of other animals such as:
Gaur - no longer classified as bison, these are the largest wild cattle in the world,
Nilgai, or Blue Bull, the world's second largest antelope
Ubiquitous Spotted Deer,
Sambar Deer,
Swamp Deer or Barasingha, which means twelve pointed, after their impressive antlers
Golden Jackals (mainly Pench)
one Indian wild Dog or Dhole (I missed the other 12 in the pack by only a few minutes, but couldn't get any pix)
Numerous Wild Boar, which only showed themselves around dawn and dusk, again very difficult to photograph due to low lighting,
one Muntjac or Barking Deer,
Numerous Grey Langur Monkeys,
Some Rhesus Macaques, which were too small and quick for me to photograph
plus numerous birds, some of which are shown below.

The problems with photography here are that the wildlife is most active around dawn and dusk, when light levels are low.

We were out just after dawn, but in the evening we had to be out of the parks by 6:30pm when things were just beginning to liven up. There were no night safaris!

The animals also tend to slip off into the forest when vehicles approach meaning, again, low light levels and an untidy background of leaves, branches and tree trunks... which can also obscure the subject.

The food was rather monotonously curry flavoured and the beer was disappointingly served to tourists at London prices!

All pix were taken using a Fujifilm Finepix s8000fd,

click to link to the Ealing and Hampshire House PhotoSoc.

All images are © Robbie Hildred 2010