Queen's throne: Rajbagh

The current queen and the resident tigress T17 have preferred the valleys of Kachida for rearing her cubs instead of this envious home. Sometime during the beginning of the monsoon, she moved her 3 cubs to a new home in Kachida Valley & has been staying there ever since. While she has been visiting the lake areas occasionally, most of these visits are without her cubs.

Post birth of the much-awaited litter of T17 sometime in early May, everyone waited patiently for the monsoon to get over, with only one thing in mind. To capture the latest first family of Ranthambhore against the backdrop of lakes & historical ruins around lakes. To all who had fond memories of Machli’s litter growing in the lake areas, it was like history repeating itself on lakes again. Given the flamboyant & bold character of T17, it was perceived that her cubs would exhibit similar behaviour and oblige people with some fantastic images and memories. But as the news of her moving to a new home spread, it was surely not well received.

Her new home has all the privileges-privacy from peeping eyes, another big water body to live around,

T17 in her new home

plenty of prey base to support the family & no threat to cubs from males. What else would she need at this point in time? A local guide who is pretty upset with T17 said” Sir T17 is not the same anymore, she has changed, “usmein ‘Badlao’ aa gaya hai :)”. There could be multiple reasons for her to move cubs from the lake area. Have mentioned some in my previous blog posts including the increasing possibility of conflict between T28 & T25 for control over the lake area. Both the males are her lovers & also the probable father of her cubs. The fact remains that Rajbagh feels cheated of being deprived of this privilege.

In the given scenario T17 & her cubs are not likely to return back to the lake area soon, it would be a good idea to rent out the lake area to some other tiger probably T19 or any of her cubs or any other tiger who wishes to rent this most distinguished address. Any suggestions???