I recently shared my cultural and travel photos from my 2015 India trip. Of course, the primary focus of that trip was wildlife, and though it took nearly two years to finish processing a relatively small amount of photos, I can finally say the images are online.
This latest gallery features wildlife photos from Hemis National Park in northern India, and Bandhavgarh, Kanha and Ranthambore National Parks in central India.
The trip was not exactly a success. It served as a scouting excursion for future tours, but I came home feeling that India would not work well for my tours any time in the near future. And frankly, I had pretty terrible luck in general. For a month-long trip there weren’t very many photo opportunities. The wildlife was not particularly cooperative. Though I knew snow leopards would be elusive in the Himalayas, none of the other animals in the Himalayas wanted to be photographed much either. And then the tigers refused to play along too. But that’s just the way things go with wildlife, right? Still, the animals weren’t the only issue, as travel and health complications also caused problems. So I don’t look back on my time in India fondly. Nonetheless, I did see a few new species, which is always exciting, and at least I can thank the owls for cooperating! There may be a day when I choose to return to India to give things another try (though it’s unlikely I’ll bring a group with me). But for now, this will remain my sole collection of images from that region.
View the full gallery of wildlife images from this trip here. A preview is below.
The Chukar partridge has been imported and released in places such as North America, but I was fortunate to see it in its native home.
Strangely, a number of the species I did see in the Himalayas are also found in Yellowstone, including the Horned lark (pictured here), Black-billed magpie and red fox.
Southern plains gray langurs were one of the most common mammals seen in India’s tiger parks.
The chital, or spotted deer, is the most common deer species seen in many of the tiger parks.
A golden jackal patrols Kanha National Park.
My first wild tiger, which appeared briefly at a distance in Kanha National Park.
We encountered male tiger T-28 during a territorial patrol very early in the morning in Ranthambore National Park. Due to the dark conditions, the image quality of these photos isn’t great.
This Rose-ringed parakeet was one of the most colorful subjects of the trip.
A White-throated kingfisher works on swallowing a freshwater crab it had caught.
Thank goodness for owls! The Brown fish owl is the largest of four owl species I saw on this trip.
All of the Collared scops owls I saw were hiding (and sleeping) in hollowed-out tree trunks.
View the full India 2015 Wildlife gallery here. And remember that you can order prints of nearly any image in the photo archive.
