The tiger has always been one of my favourite animals , not just because of its striking looks but when the tiger starts to move the whole jungle comes alive with the warning calls of all the animals, it is like the excitement that builds before a famous rock band takes to the stage.

Before my photography days one of the first animals I travelled to see in the wild was the bengal tiger. I thought it would be a great idea to bring a disposable black and white camera along to capture the memories, I still have the photos but you can probably guess what the results were like, it was a steep learning curve!

I have spent a lot of time in Bandhavgarh and Ranthambhore national parks over the years, some of the memories are shared below , many more were stored only in my brain as jungle photography has many challenges.

On some of my earlier journeys I would travel to Bandhavgarh for 6 weeks at a time , often with a huge bag of 140 rolls of slide film that I had to pray would not be harmed by the X-ray machines in the domestic airports.I still can remember the feeling of looking at my camera and seeing that I was on frame 35 of a 36 frame roll and then seeing a tiger break into top speed on a hunt, the panic of opening up the camera to change the film roll as clouds of dust surrounded me.With digital photography so many previous challenges are easily forgotten.