Thread by @adityadickysin

Meet a tigress called Arrowhead from Ranthambhore. This picture is from 2015 when she was still a cub. Her brother Pac-Man is running behind -(I named him after a Pac-Man video game mark on his head). It’s story time

Arrowhead, Pac-Man and another sister called Lightning were born to a legendary tigress called Krishna or T19 her official number, in early 2014. The four of them crossing the ‘land bridge’ on Rajbagh lake here in summers of 2014

By the year 2016 Arrowhead had established her range around the lakes - an area gifted to her by Krishna who captured a new territory and had another litter there. The lakes were no Arrowhead’s

She bonded with this young and very shy male numbered T 86 officially. This one and by 2017 they were mating regularly

By the end of 2018 Arrowhead had a litter of two cubs but they didn’t survive beyond the age of a few months. In early 2019 she had another litter of (we later came to know) of two cubs. In end Feb we saw them for this first time here

During the next few months till the end of June 2019 when the Ranthambhore national park shuts for monsoons I had a blast visually documenting their lives. It’s special feeling to document cubs of tigers whose grandparents were cubs when I started. Blessed indeed

I shoot with a 4 camera set up & usually go the park with my core team. This is how we shoot and this is what we get consistently. I am not the best around but I am consistent and I give it time - decades kind of time. My Ranthambhore photography project started in 1999.

One of my drivers Bhaiya wanted me to name these two cubs Riddhi & Siddhi cause he is a big follower of Ganeshji but we needed to justify the names as I usually name them after a facial mark. So this is Riddhi - I see the Hindi letter र inverted over her right eye. Don’t laugh🙂

And this is Siddh. I am afraid she doesn’t have any mark to brand with the name. I can ID them from a lot of markings but none scream her name to me. Little did I know then that I would be following these two amazing sisters called @RiddhiB9 & @SiddhiBhandari - 🙏

In the end of June 2019 the park shut for 3 monsoon months. It’s scary because the three month gap can sometimes kill the story you are documenting. Once the park reopened in October our story started again and till the lockdown I was busy seeing them grow.

By March 2020 their play fights we’re getting into more of fights and less of play. That’s how they start till they finally separate. Then disaster struck the planet and everything locked down. My story was turning out to be a disaster ☹️

Then in June 2020 the park opened up again for a couple of weeks. There were hardly any visitors and we were on. Amazingly on the first day that I went looking for them after the park reopened, I found all three waiting on the main road to the park. Tigers of Ranthambhore like me

On June 2020 the fights between them we’re getting rough. All three were fighting as Arrowhead was mating again and wanted them to stay away from her.

This was the last time in June 2020 that I saw all three together. I haven’t been going to the park regularly since then and I don’t really have regular pictures of them to tell the story after that. But they live separately and their mother has another litter of two cubs.