This video of family of five tigers in wild was shot in Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve, Maharashtra, India in April, 2012. It was hot, temprature was around 45 degree Celsius during the day.  In jungles, mostly all the nature lovers try for the pole postion i.e they want to be the first one to enter in the jungle during the safari as during the summers tigers love to spend the time in water. So it’s always a good idea to check the water bodies. In 2012, Tadoba was raining with tiger cubs. In all the three tourist ranges i.e Mohurli, Tadoba and Kolsa cubs were present.

Strategy was simple during these days, you needed to decide which tiger family you wanted to see in particular safari as where ever you go there was almost 99% chances to sight tiger. We had a plan to go to Kolsa range on that day. We had a plan to check “Ainbodi” (Ain is local name of a tree, Scientific name – Terminaliaellepitica, popular name – Crocodile Bark due to characteristic pattern also known as Saaj in Madhya Pradesh or Asana and “bodi” means water pond) first, then Telia lake and then head to Kolsa.

The road from Mohurli gate straight goes to Tadoba range through Khatoda gate – division between two ranges. This road is mostly a straight road and thus provides good visibility up to 1 km.

Due to the scarcity of water, forest department has created few artificial water bodies along the road (50 meters inside the road on fire lines).

I along with my family, our driver (Samir M Sheikh) and guide(Kailash) entered into Jungle for afternoon safari. After covering distance of two kilometers, we saw 2 animals on road almost a km away and it was very difficult to identify. Samir asked our Guide Kailash “Road par kya hai?” (What’s on the road?). I  along with Kailash said it’s not clear and took a guess might be Langoor. Then Kailash saw through the binocular in a moving car and said the magical word “TIGER” and then we knew that these must be Teila cubs (Family of 4 cubs with female). Going after a bit,  Samir and Kailash decided to maintain a distance from them as they would might leave the road. Cubs were facing towards us and were keen and observing the tourist Gypsies.  The other Gypsies following us also stopped and some people were saying to take our vehicle more close but Samir and Kailash made them understand that these cubs will run away at this moment as they were not in the mood to allow vehicles to come close. As soon we were ready to click pictures two more cubs emerged out from Ainbodi road. We were extremely delighted to see all the 4 cubs together but there was more to come. Their mother too elegantly emerged out from the same Ainbodi road and joined her cubs. And I handed over the video camera to our guide Kailash to shoot video for record. I was clicking pictures with still camera. They came certain distance towards the car and then one by one started going inside the forest.

For me this was second experience to watch 5 tigers together and this time tigers were facing towards the camera. (Last time I was following them) We were approximately 400 meters from tigers. It was a treat to watch five tiger together on the road. And after this we went to Kolsa in search of another family of cubs near Ambe Uttara area, who were younger than these but couldn’t sight them. This family was not sighted to any tourists till that time. But we were fortunate to saw a female tigress (mother of two sub-adult cubs that time) in Ram Singh Amba (Mango) area of Kolsa range.

Click here for picture of Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve.