International Tiger Day: Capturing elegance of the big cats

I was driving through the forests of Ranthambore one winter morning, when we spotted a tiger cub by the dry stream bed under a tree. It kept looking up at the tree, and we couldn’t figure out what it was looking at. It was only after a few moments that we saw this tigress appear between the branches and leaves on the tree.

She soon descended the tree, slowly digging her nails in the tree bark, as she jumped off from a height. Tigers are not great tree climbers like leopards, but they do a fairly good job if the tree branches out at a lower height, and/or if the tree is slightly slanted. They also are known to climb only a select few types of trees. Since they are far heavier animals compared to the leopards, they find it difficult to lift their body weight up a tree.