Panna fulfilled my dream to shoot a tiger with its reflection in water

It was a freezing winter morning and the Sun had just appeared on the horizon as we entered Panna for our first safari. The forests in Madhya Pradesh during winters are bone chilling and tiger sighting isn't something Panna is famous for. Though we don't visit forests for tigers, yet who doesn't like a bonus?
Ten minutes into the forest, we came across a tracking vehicle as half of the tigers in Panna are collared.We just followed it for a distance when our guide, R P Omre, decided to depend on nature's tracking. Leaving the rest of the vehicles, we took another route and in a few minutes, we heard alarm calls of monkeys and spotted dear.
We were sure of the presence of a tiger and yet we couldn't believe our eyes when three beautiful tigresses (mother and her two sub-adult female cubs) walked in one by one from the nearby grassland, drinking water on the way and vanishing again in the surrounding thicket.
This was the first set of the captured moments. The trip started with a bang. Panna has long been on my list of places to visit for two reasons - first the Ken river (Karnavati) which is known as one of the cleanest rivers of our country and, second, is the hilly terrain that makes it best for leopards. Also, my wildlife enthusiast friend had told me a lot about the biodiversity of Panna and my level of curiosity was already high. Of late, Panna has been in the news, first for tigers falling prey to poaching and in 2009 when the MP forest department focused on improving the tiger population in the park.
From Kanha and Bandhaavgarh, several pairs of tigers were brought in and successfully relocated. The park now boasts of over 35 sub-adults. Though Panna forest has a lot more to offer than just tigers, around 11 tigers have been collared for monitoring. A team of forest officials, along with Wildlife Institute specialists, monitors the collared tiger, round the clock, which is not an easy job.
During our rounds in the forest, we came across the tracking vehicle - a van fitted with an antenna and a tracking device. It emits signals as per the location of the collared tigers and accordingly beeps on the screen. The tigers can be located anywhere within a 100-m radius. So, many tourist vans simply follow these tracking vehicles for a possible tiger spotting. But then nature trumps science and in a forest like Panna, even if a tiger is hardly a few feet away, it takes luck to sight it.
The Panna National Park is spread over 650sqkm, making it nearly 1.5-times of the size of Pune city. Panna is gifted with a huge buffer area around the reserved forest. While I was travelling to and from Panna, I realized that there are no big towns or factories, or any such developments for hundreds of kilometres from the forest. This is what makes Panna special among as it has the capacity to accommodate a number of tigers, provided we acknowledge its potential.
This detachment from development is also a challenge for Panna as its vast area makes it difficult to monitor tiger movement, both in and out of the park. This may be a reason why tigers had disappeared from the forest a decade ago.
Tigers like to constantly expand their territory. When they have vast tracts of land to explore, they must have gone out of the park. Besides, with such a big forest around the main park, the entry for poachers must have been quite easy. There was no monitoring system in place in the past, unlike what it is now.
Here is where tourism makes a difference in tiger population as well as forest conservation. The tourists were the ones who had realized that tigers were not being sighted in Panna acting as a wakeup call for the entire system. The forest department should get full credit for relocating species like tiger and conserving them. When we talk about tiger, then it's not just one species but the entire chain of ecology around it. Looking at the vast buffer zone around Panna, I was happy as this is the forest where we can accommodate the new tiger population.
The main hurdle was the villages in this spread of buffer forests and shifting them. Unless that happens, the man-animal conflict would continue. A leopard is smart as it can survive even around a human habitat. However, tigers, being a fearless animal, often walk and prey in the open, becoming easy targets for human beings.
Talking about the big cats, it was my wish to click a tiger with its reflection in the water. I think forests always fulfil one's wish. What was needed was a bit of patience coupled with some luck. And Panna did not fail me. I realized my dream of clicking a beautiful tigress with her reflection in the water.
Another wish was to get a clear frame of a leopard. During a morning safari, we had stopped at a center point (spots in the forest created for rest rooms) and suddenly heard an alarm call. Our guide said it was a territory of a female leopard and she had been seen in the last few days with her cubs. We left our cups of tea and rushed out in the vehicle.
Just after a turn, we spotted a van ahead and a female leopard walking on a road nearby. What happened next was the van gave us way so we that we can take photographs of the leopard. Such gestures make forest trips memorable and make you realize the true spirit of the wilderness.
Surprisingly, the leopard left the track and stopped parallel to our vehicle. We could clearly see the gorgeous animal as it walked with ease and grace. While looking through the camera, I realized why leopards are often called "ghosts" as it's so difficult to focus on the animal because of the spots on their body. The entire episode lasted for about 10 minutes, before she disappeared into the forest.
The writer heads a real estate firm