Bagheera – The Black Beauty | InnTheWild, Masinagudi
Bagheera | Black Panther | InnTheWild
Yes! Bagheera, the famous character from Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book has made a surprise entry into my life, filled me with excitement and joy that I felt as a kid while watching the Jungle Book movie. It was more than a thrill to see a black panther and a leopard together at the time of moonlight safari. I still remember the first sighting with every detail. On 1st February 2015 we started our moonlight safari with MS Tracy, who was the only guest on that day. We picked her up from the tree house and took a right turn heading towards our bungalow. As usual I started looking for night jars which can be regularly seen nearby coffee plantation and neighboring clearings. Suddenly, I saw pair of eyes right next to the crocodile bark tree which stand alone in this patch. To our surprise another pair of eyes glittered next to the first pair of eyes. We turned the Gypsy and tried to cover little bit distance towards these glittering pairs of eyes and we were shocked. There was a pair of leopards standing in front of us. One of them had a normal yellow coat with black spots and another one was jet black. Then what we spent almost an hour to capture these beautiful creatures in our cameras. The one with regular yellow coat seemed to be very shy and till disappeared within no time. But the black one gave us ample time to try our skills. Capturing a jet black leopard in spot light hardly focusing light till the creature was not so simple. But with help of our skillful driver who managed to drive vehicle in this difficult terrain without disturbing an animal we got some good snaps.
