On the first evening safari into the Kaziranga national park, we realized that the winter sunset is bewitchingly beautiful with a spectacular array of colors lighting up the national park during the twilight zone. So we decided that we would spend every evening in the Kaziranga national park photographing this magical twilight zone.
This evening was no different. We had photographed the sunset and were on our way out of the national park. That’s when we encountered a Indian Rhinoceros by the side of the jeep tracks. The driver switched off the engines immediately, since by now he knew that we were keen to get good Rhino pictures. There was also another jeep, which had reversed and parked ahead of us. Unmindful of the fact that we were sandwiched between the Indian Rhinoceros and the other jeep, we took a couple of pictures of this handsome beast. That’s when a tourist from the other jeep started clicking photographs with the camera flash switched ON and the blinding flashlight unsettled the Indian Rhinoceros.
Indian Rhinoceros in general do have poor eyesight. And in this scenario, the fact that the light was going down fast, made matters worse. The unsettled Rhinoceros decided to charge us; we got one set of images before the charging Rhinoceros came pretty close. The driver then hurriedly started the jeep and took off as the Indian Rhinoceroswas zeroing in on us. It was a close call!
Here are a few images from that thrilling encounter. Please note all images are near full frame taken with the D300 and 300mm f2.8 lens combination. The pinkish twilight zone lighting forced us to crank up the ISO to 1600 and it was a challenge to get crisp images with the shutter speed dipping to 1/25sec.
