Return to Corbett
Nearly five decades after my first visit as a schoolboy, I returned to Jim Corbett National Park — this time with a camera and a very different appreciation of the forest. Three days and six safaris at Dhikala brought five tiger sightings, including memorable encounters with Perwali and Paarwali. But the trip was about much more than tigers: gharials fighting in the Ramganga, elephants moving through mist, winter light filtering through sal forests, and long, patient waits in the Dhikala grasslands. More than the sightings, it was the landscape, the light and the feeling of being immersed in the forest that stayed with me. After fifty years, Corbett reminded me why some places are worth returning to.
Framing Winter at Bharatpur
Bharatpur's Keoladeo Ghana National Park is one of India's most distinctive wildlife destinations — a UNESCO World Heritage Site in eastern Rajasthan, about fifty kilometres from Agra, where wetlands, open skies and bare winter trees create a landscape unlike any other bird sanctuary in the subcontinent. Between October and March, the park draws migratory waterfowl from as far as Siberia and Central Asia. But Bharatpur's reputation among photographers rests on something quieter than its species list. The light here — particularly in the misty winter mornings and the brief, dramatic sunsets — is exceptional. For a photographer, it is less a wildlife spectacle and more a sustained lesson in patience, stillness and the art of reading light.