More Seals

As the last minute rush to see places with Patrick before he goes home, we went to Glengarriff, which is small island off a harbor about an hour from Kinsale. As we were taking a boat out to the island, we passed a rocky outcrop which was populated by seals. They were so used to tourists, I think they set their clocks to when the boat saunters by. One of the cool things is that it was probably the closest I was ever to a seal in its native habitat.

India: Leopard (Ranthambhore)

There are just a handful of sightings that I do want to point out on my own.

On our second safari out, we basically came up short - save for a tiger paw print on the road, and a mongoose sighting. So as we head out of the park, we see a leopard, technically Panthera pardus, moving in the forest about 50 feet away.

They are notoriously skittish, so once it knows we're there (not sure how it didn't hear the Jeep), it stops dead and turns completely invisible. If you didn't see it move at the beginning and know where to look, there was no way you could have seen him. In fact, the driver missed him, and it took us several minutes to explain exactly where he was.

After freezing for less than a minute, he gets up and runs out of the forest and up the mountain. The whole thing lasted about 30 seconds, but we'll never forget it.

The guide says that we were incredibly lucky, since most people can go on 30 safaris and still never see one. I put in the first photo to show how amazing its hiding ability is.

India: So how close were you to the animals?

Pretty darn close - as in closer than a zoo exhibit, even though there wasn't a barrier between me and them.

At one point we were at risk of diaper damage, since one was walking right towards our Jeep and was less than 30 feet away. By this point they know the Jeeps are harmless to them, but at the end of the day, they are still wild animals. And there are enough stories of people getting in lots of trouble with them.

India: Tiger (Ranthambhore)

Hard to explain this photo, since this just looks like an advertisement for National Geographic.

First, by this time, if you've been reading the blog, you'll know that we went to Ranthambhore National Park primarily to see Tigers in the their native habitat - one of the very few places in the World where you can actually do that. The first afternoon was fascinating, but a bust in the sighting of a Tiger. And the next morning's safari as far as tiger sightings resulted in only a couple of emergency calls from spotted deer and monkeys that a Tiger was in the area, and a Tiger track on the road.

So once we finally made it through the traffic jam from hell, we came into this beautiful sanctuary on a lake - and within a few minutes, someone had yelled "tiger". Turns out there were three tigers all hanging out together (they were actually two years old teenagers, believe it or not, who are close to striking out on their own). We first saw them on one side of the lake, then one hunted for a bird, swam across the lake. They then hung out under a old Hindu temple - until they finally moved to the other side of the lake, up the hill, where one gave us this perfect picture pose.

Maybe a better way to explain this - we saw a Leopard for 30 seconds, and it was the talk of conversation for hours - this was just in a whole other league.