Chasing Gold in Kaziranga

Kaziranga has always been more than just a wildlife destination for me—it is where my love affair with photography truly began. In 2008, I first ventured into the park with a newly-acquired Nikon D80 and a heart full of anticipation. By then, I had spent years exploring wildlife sanctuaries, but I had yet to see a tiger in the wild.

That first trip was filled with hopeful waiting. On our final safari, I found myself at the Kathpora watchtower, lingering for hours, willing a tiger to appear. It never did. Yet, that moment of longing sparked something in me—a quiet determination to return, again and again, until the forests of Kaziranga revealed their secrets.

The First Tiger

Life took over, and it wasn’t until 2013 that I returned, this time with the luxury of time after retirement. Two years later, deep in the Eastern Zone, I finally saw my first tiger in Kaziranga. From that moment, luck seemed to be on my side. Each subsequent visit gifted me with at least one sighting, as if the jungle had finally decided to let me in.

But it wasn’t just any tiger I was after. In 2019, whispers of a legend reached me—a rare golden tabby had been photographed for the first time. From that moment on, every trip had a singular goal: to see and photograph this elusive marvel.

The Golden One

In 2024, I came agonisingly close. A fresh pugmark here, a scuffle in the undergrowth there—but no tiger. I refused to give up. And finally, this March, my patience was rewarded.

It was Ranjit, my trusted driver, who made the sighting possible. His deep understanding of the forest and its creatures led us to a golden vision in the undergrowth. We found the tiger stalking an elephant calf, its mother nervously guiding it away. The golden one had seemingly managed to isolate them from the herd. While I couldn’t capture them in a single frame, the sight was enough to leave me awestruck.

Unlike their orange kin, golden tabbies have a softer, almost mythical appearance. Their unusual coats, the result of a recessive gene, give them a dreamlike quality, as if they belong to a different time, a different world. And yet, they are as much a part of Kaziranga as the misty grasslands and the flood-fed forests.

A Golden Future?

There are murmurs of something even rarer—a golden cub, born to the very tiger I had photographed. A fleeting glimpse, then nothing. If true, this means the legacy of the golden tabby lives on, tucked away in the dense jungles of Kaziranga, waiting for another photographer, another dreamer, to chase it.

Kaziranga was where my journey with the camera began. And even now, after all these years, it continues to pull me back—one frame, one story, one golden vision at a time.

Note: My first visit to Kaziranga in 2008 was with my eight-year-old daughter, Gayathri. As we waited in vain for a tiger to appear, she sketched one on a scrap of paper, hoping to summon it. That tiger never came. It would take another two years before we finally saw one in the wild.

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