the story

Dhikala lies at the heart of Corbett National Park, where the Ramganga river cuts through dense sal forest and open grassland. It's one of the last places in India where tigers still move freely across a truly wild landscape — and one of the hardest to predict. Some visits pass in silence. This one didn't.

the encounter

She stepped onto the track without warning — the female cub of Parwali, sister to the dominant tigress of this stretch of forest. For a few seconds she held the path, gaze fixed ahead, before continuing into the trees. There was no time to think, only to shoot.

the photograph

A wild tiger walks steadily down a leaf-strewn forest track, framed between two towering trunks that draw the eye straight to its gaze. Shot with a long lens and shallow depth of field, the print holds a quiet tension between stillness and approach.