This morning I...

... watched northern plains grey langurs, chital and sambar to my heart's content...

... was so respectful of the tiger and its need for space that I failed to see one...

... helped my new friend Vihan, aged nine, to make a list of the birds we had seen together...

... and met a common trinket snake which had been rescued in a village last night and was released around the lodge tonight.

This afternoon...

... I caused our jeep's driver and allocated park guide to have breakdowns by insisting, with my guests, that we drive away from a tiger. Maya, the tigress we all saw yesterday, had been found late in the morning asleep right by the Navegaon road where most jeeps saw her. This afternoon she was still there, though now further from the road under a bush. There was a crush of jeeps on the road and it was hot so, my guests having seen her much better in the morning, we decided to leave her and look for other wildlife elsewhere. Our driver and park guide, relatively new to this game and used to guests who are interested in the tiger alone, were incredulous and refused to budge. How could we be so stupid as to want to move away from a tiger? We left her in the end and spent a lovely afternoon trundling through this beautiful park by ourselves, watching barking deer and ruddy mongoose, oriental honey buzzard and black ibis. By the time we left the park the tigress had still not left her bush.