In March we went back to India. This time it was much further south. The main target was the famous black panther living in Nagarhole national park, an animal I had wanted to see for several years but could not quite arrange a trip to look for it.

The whole thing started badly with a cancelled flight losing our first 24 hours of the trip. When we finally arrived in Bengaluru, there was no luggage. A lot more time was wasted, with another half day at Nagarhole gone. Our bags actually took 6 days to arrive thanks to the incompetent courier who didn’t bother to deliver them!

Nagarhole is a lovely national park. Like most in India, it is separated into different zones, so it became clear that at best I would only be able to go into the panther’s territory for half my remaining drives! Very frustrating, but understandable given the demand to see this wonderful animal. We stayed in a lovely lodge and there was lots of other great wildlife.

Birds in the lodge grounds such as this ashy prinia

And the Asian paradise flycatcher were gorgeous.

In the national park, there were a variety of old favourites, such as the many Asian elephants, amongst which were some quite impressive tuskers, as well as some new animals like the Malabar giant squirrel

The chance to see a tiger is always amazing, so we did enjoy a couple of reasonable sightings, including this female.

In spite of looking very hard, the panther remained elusive throughout, with no one seeing him. Other leopards did make an appearance , and like the tiger, are always breathtakingly beautiful.

And finally we got great sightings of a family of Indian wild dogs, or dhole. I have seen them before but always at a distance. These guys were very relaxed and allowed great views of the family.

Sadly, we left Nagarhole without seeing the panther and headed to our second destination, the tea plantations at Valparai. Here I wanted to see and photograph the rare and highly endangered lion tailed macaque. This spectacular monkey lives in the forest around Valparai, and we actually encountered a troop wandering through one of the local villages.

These monkeys are really spectacular, and like most primates, great fun to photograph.

The residence we stayed in was in the middle of a tea plantation and I was amazed at the amount of wildlife living around and in the plantations.  There were Indian gaur, the world’s largest wild cattle seen on a number of occasions.

We even saw another family of wild dogs between the tea bushes!

Birds in the area were spectacular. The great hornbill has always been a favourite of mine. We found a nest which was occupied so the adults were coming and going bringing in food.

We were awoken very early every morning by the amazing Malabar whistling thrush, whose whistle was exactly like a person whistling a tune. Very amusing.

The biggest surprise of the whole trip however came one evening when we were driving back. We saw a number of people on the side of the road. They seemed to be looking at something in the plantation, and someone said it was a bear. We got of the car to have a look, and suddenly realised that there in front of us in the evening gloom was a black panther! I was amazed. I got two quick shots of it, before it turned and ran off into the bushes. There was a huge commotion with all the tea workers wanting to see the image on my camera. Turns out no one had ever photographed a panther in that area before.

It proved to be a great end to wonderful trip. The panther pictures were not great but finally seeing Bagheera from the Jungle book after all those years was amazing.