Visiting Nepal in 1988, I was amazingly lucky spotting a tiger.  I was atop an elephant when a cat leaped out of deep grass several yards ahead.  The tiger gave one snarl and bounded off.  A picture, forget about it.  Total time was measured in single-digit seconds.  So I wasn’t too optimistic including on a tour of Rajasthan stops at Ranthambore National Park, stronghold of tigers, and Castle Bera in leopard country.

 Lo and behold, the first morning in Ranthambore, a mother and her two cubs treated us to a good half-hour display.  At Castle Bera, homestead of the Thakur family and now run as a four-room hotel by the family’s last member, a mother leopard and her two cubs wandered around the rocky ridge of their den for a couple of hours at dusk and dawn.  They shared the ridge with a couple of very cautious mongoose.

Did you know tigers have white spots on the backs of their ears?