Beauty and the Beast

 

While our entire Namibia trip was thrilling but this is one of those moments which I will never forget in my life. My fingers froze on the camera. During our Masai Mara and Serengeti safari, we were fortunate to have several leopards/Cheethas/Lions/Elephants/Rhinos sightings from a very near distance but none I would say was an ENCOUNTER.

 In typical African  safaris you stay in the vehicles with pop roofs during the ride and can roll up your windows when needed. Ben was our safari guide for the trip but on our last day of safari we hired a professional leopard tracker Danny. Danny came across as a calm, composed and confident gentleman. For the day we changed our vehicle to an open Safari jeep, it was just three of us and Danny.

Our leopard tracking lasted 4 hours of off-road adventure in the river banks, mountains, gravel roads to dense forest full of thorny acacia shrubs in an open Safari vehicle…....We tracked fresh footprints on river banks to birds chirping. Nemo said "Mamma I want to pray to Namibian God to show us Leopard and Cheetahs". I smiled and told him that is a good idea. While we were almost on the verge of giving-up hopes…we heard a gentle rumbling in the bush. Those ruthless confident eyes did not leave an iota of doubt that our search ends here. It was at a distance of 15-20 meters.

What if it attacks us? How close can it get? Within a fraction of a second countless thoughts jolted my brain, we do not have any arms or even a pepper spray :(…grrr!!!. Nemo being in the middle of Kaushik and myself, we squeezed him to make him less visible. I murmured, will it  attack us?

….. Danny whispered "just stay quiet, believe it or not animals are more afraid of us than we are afraid of them". I faintly nodded.

I completely forgot about changing the focus/exposure/settings on my camera to match the subject and froze …kept my camera at high speed shooting mode with the previous settings being restored. All I could think of was my 100-400mm plus the lens hood makes it about 1.5 feet long, as a defense tool. By the time I returned to my senses, it was within a yard ( 1 meter) of our vehicle…barely a leap away….. it gently stalled, looked at us straight into the eyes and then walked gracefully into the tall grasses.

My fondness of photography is purely due to the fact that it connects me to those moments years later. As I write this and see this picture it still gives me goosebumps and blood runs faster. It was a memorable incident and I can now truly appreciate the grace and beauty of this beast.