After the spectacular sighting of the Tiger Queen of Ranthambore, popularly known as Arrowhead, in the afternoon, we set out to get a glimpse out the twin princesses of Ranthambore. The local guides in the Ranthambore National park affectionally call them Riddhi and Siddhi. But first, we ventured into the buffer zone as we had heard that a huge male Tiger was spotted in the morning. The early afternoon sun was too hot and we searched everywhere in vain. As we turned back towards the exit of the zone, we spotted pug marks and immediately after we spotted this Tiger nonchalantly sleeping in the shade of the shrubs, about 15 feet from the tracks. Given the thick foliage, we just got a glimpse of him.
We left the male Tiger to continue with his afternoon siesta and headed towards zone 3 to try and spot the twin princesses Riddhi and Siddhi. We didn’t have to venture far before we spotted one of them walking towards the road. This was in zone 4 and given her wet fur, it was easy to figure out that she had been cooling off the hot afternoon heat in a waterhole, nearby. She seemed pretty bold for a sub-adult cub and she walked straight towards us and my camera captured her confident stroll in the afternoon sun.
While we spotted her in zone 4, she seemed pretty sure about where she was headed, and so was our naturalist. He was sure that she was heading in the direction of the lake in zone 3. We were on full day safaris and that gave us the permission to switch zones and follow Tigers as they move across zones. We went onto the banks of the lake and waited for her. It was about fifteen minutes by the time she emerged from the thicket and onto the tall grass adjoining the lake.
