We don’t need to have a particular day to observe an animal day. We should protect our entire animal kingdom for our own survival. Covid-19 is just a proof that animals are free to roam our habitats and we are indoors because of fear being infected from Covid-19. Unless a vaccine is out in the medical world we can’t survive.

Having said that today is International Leopard Day and India has a sizeable population of leopard, though sadly no count is there in any Indian National Parks. All due importance is given to Tiger count and keeping the Tigers alive but no count is taken of Leopard. I’ve seen Leopards in Panna National Park in October 2018 and Bandhavgarh National Park in May 2019 both in Madhya Pradesh. I was most impressed with my first ever sighting in Panna as that was my first safari. Prior to that I’ve been to Sundarbans number of times in short cruises and to Mangalajodi for bird watching but Panna was a first. We were looking for a tiger for 2-3 hours with not a single sighting when the Naturalist said that I’m truly lucky as a leopard is sighted having a baby monkey for its food. Leopards are the most shy animal in the cat family. I had visited in October of 2018 and not a good season to visit as grasses are too high in height post monsoon keeping the visibility to minimal level. Nevertheless I spotted this particular one and I was way too pleased with myself. The leopard was most of the time looking at my direction and obliged me much to click for 5 mins. I couldn’t see the baby monkey as it was on the ground and not visible. Because it was my first sighting I just looked first at the leopard itself for few seconds just to get the feel and then started clicking. I couldn’t stop myself from clicking continuously. The leopard finished its food and walked towards the waterbed, drank water and hid without much of a care of course.

Truly my day was made and I had no regrets on my first safari without sighting a Tiger. I thought to myself that Tiger for the next time in Madhya Pradesh of course. On the occasion of International Leopard Day my share. Thank you for reading