Pench - A Timeless Jungle

A loud moaning call carried across the forest causing the chital and sambar, which had come to drink to look up in anxious anticipation.

- Rakesh Shukla

Normally, the mere sound of the tiger is not enough to spook animals, but the day was fast drawing to a close and visibility was poor. I watched as the animals at the waterhole hastily drank their fill and scurried off to the safety of the forest gloom. I cannot say why some forest moments seem imbued by more tension than others, but on this occasion I observed that even the tree pies which had been chattering ceaselessly now flew to a nearby tree as an uneasy quiet descended upon the jungle.

A troop of langurs on a tendu tree, however, soon broke ranks with their co-denizens and set up a maddening series of chattering calls, which seemed to take on a hysterical note of alarm with each passing moment.

By now the sun was about to dip over the horizon and its dim and slanting rays glancing over the tree tops added to the sense of timelessness. I heard the loud belling alarm of a sambar stag. This was no false alarm. I scanned the forest for some sign of the predator. Nothing. I followed the sambar herd through my field glasses as it entered a thicket and when I swung my vision back across the forest fringe I saw the tiger.