Tiger photography India – March 19th to 30th 2019 trip report

” Hi Ian a quick email to say thanks so much for organising our tiger trip. An amazing experience that I am not sure photos or words can ever truly portray to others – memories made that will remain with me forever. Roll on October for our Borneo adventure !!!” Liz Spencer

We’ve recently finished this year’s tiger photography trip in India which yielded some extraordinary close encounters with these iconic cats. I’ll start this trip report with some tiger photos as that’s the main draw of these tours. But we also photographed over 90 bird species on this holiday along with lots of other wildlife.

Tiger Photography India- best time of year

I always run my tiger photography holidays in late March is this is coming to the end of hot dry season here. In the afternoon heat there’s a good chance of seeing tigers bathing in water and we had a wonderful sighting of this female tigress known as T60.  Watching such a beautiful and powerful animal from just a few metres away was a truly humbling experience.

Another highlight of our many tiger sightings on this trip was coming across a huge male called T104 lying on the track in the shade. We parked up and spent the afternoon watching him sleeping, stretching and then casually getting up and wandering along the road before melting away into the forest. 

Ok a few more tiger photos from this trip and then I’ll move onto some of the other wildlife we saw here …

On our very first safari this year in Ranthambore we had a lovely close encounter with a female tigress called Noori.

And then a great sighting of Tara who is one of the cubs of Krishna in zone four.

India birds

We photographed over 90 bird species on this trip and there’s just a few random images of these below.

An Intermediate Egret with breeding plumage.

Spotted Owlet.

Common Kingfisher.

Flame Headed Woodpecker.

Brown Fish Owl.

A Rufus Tree Pie feeding on the afterbirth of this deer.

India tiger photography trip – Other wildlife

The locals in Ranthambore lovingly refer to Spotted Deer as tiger chocolate !

And we always see plenty of them on these trips including this new born taking its first feed.

We also had a fantastic sighting of a Golden Jackal one afternoon which is only the third time I’ve ever seen these beautiful animals in Ranthambore.

As an added bonus it was the Hindu Holi festival on our first day, so on route to the National Park we called in at a few Hindu temples.