Sighting a tiger on a safari is every visitor’s wish. When you get to spot a tiger that is in no hurry and that there is no other jeep in the vicinity to disturb you or the tiger, it is the ultimate dream of a tiger enthusiast fulfilled. When we entered Corbett Tiger Reserve on the afternoon safari, we had gathered information about the locations of the sightings of tigers on the previous safari.
Within 15 minutes of entering the park and while going through a patch of grassland, our driver Pan Singh noticed a moment on the edge of the road ahead and saw what appeared to be the tip of the tail of a peacock disappearing in the vegetation. Pan Singh’s jungle instincts immediately got triggered and his next thought was that almost all the male peacocks have shed their tail feathers after their breeding season and during the monsoon and why would there be a peacock supporting a tail at this time of the year.
Instinctively, Pan Singh stopped the jeep where the movement in the vegetation was noticed and to our surprise, there was a young male tiger standing in a patch of scrub, about 10 meters from us. The tiger stood its ground for a good 10 minutes, before slowly melting into the vegetation.
A peaceful tiger!
