BENGALURU: The death of South India’s bold and handsome tiger, most commonly referred to as ‘Prince of Bandipur’, is indeed a big loss to nature lovers, researchers and of course wildlife photographers.
I was fortunate to have had close encounters of Prince during every visit I made to Bandipur. During the early days in 2009-10, he seemed the dominant male and this continued until recently. I named him Prince in 2010, since another huge dominant male named Agastya was ruling the tourism zone of Bandipur. But soon he perished and Prince took over almost the entire tourism zone.
As per the research and camera traps records, Prince migrated from Begur range to Bandipur tourism zone. Despite so many safari vehicles plying in the tourism zone, Prince never bothered to shy away and went about his business like territory marking. He simply loved water and most of the time he was seen resting in a waterhole.
He also holds records of hunting down large prey like the Indian bison (Gaurs) on many occasions. He was known to even hunt down cattle that ventured into the protected forests.
On July 1, 2014, he chased a large herd of 21 domesticated buffalos near Moolapura waterhole and killed three of them.
I still remember many of my friends not just from Karnataka but also other states and various countries visited Bandipur to have a glimpse of this amazing feline.
Prince will be remembered by each one of us forever and I will surely miss him.
(The writer is the Bengaluru centre head of KPIT Technologies and a natural history photographer)