The Grand Matriarch…

Listen to me, lady...

You have castles inside your bones,

coronets in your heart,

if he threatens you with battle,

you raise him a whole war...

The last time I checked,

queens cower before no man!

- Adapted from Nikita Gill's Queens III -

A year and a half that halted the world in its tracks, also halted out wild sojourns for sometime. Quite obviously, the long hiatus set us off on a wildlife spree and we set sail to greener and deeper wilderness. One such sojourn brought us to the lesser visited Kolsa range of Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve in eastern Maharashtra in west India.

Our earlier expeditions this season was full of leopards and male tigers, since that's what we tracked and saw everywhere. We were beginning to believe that the sight of tigresses and cubs will elude us for sometime. Knowing this place to be a quiet haven for breeding tigresses, we came here to turn the tide of luck.

But ah! That joyous pleasure of watching a beautiful beast you haven't seen in a long time, particularly when the last time this queen paid you a visit was on your birthday six years ago. And this time, unlike the last - not alone, but with her bundle of three little ones trotting behind her.

Driving through a bend in a game drive, where the road leaves the lake and the meadows for denser forest, all it took was the sight of a buffalo herd peering in one direction and ganging up for defense. What great art is this of tracking the striped enigma, where the behavior of every other denizen is seen in the light of this magical creature.

Investigating this known phenomenon, we came across this queen quenching her thirst in the lake's shallow pool, away from where we had waited two days, where she had tucked away her three new-borns in an inaccessible bamboo cluster (many believed it was two, until we discovered and validated that it was three)

But, once she is in sight, she always puts on a show. After all, the queen never disappoints. A walk through the meadows, a rest in a nallah, the blotch of blood on her nose, the road crossing and disappearance only confirmed our theory that she had hunted, was well fed and was out to fetch her little ones. So we went to where we knew the family was and waited, until the queen walked her stage, commanded her progeny to step out and follow her in a file - but surely not before one of the princes chose to shower his affection on her.

What a week that was… On one end, all-out exclusive tiger sightings to the other - the threat of contracting the virus. However, nothing shall deter us in tracking these wild beasts when moments like these reveal themselves from time to time...

25 Apr 2022, Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve, Chandrapur, Maharashtra