A refreshingly atmospheric image by our March 2015 Corbett Tour participant, Deepti Aravind, shows the outstanding landscape photography opportunities omnipresent in this beautiful park. And here’s a description of Deepti’s experience, in her own words:
“I used to think that one Toehold photography tour would suffice an entire lifetime. After that you are equipped to go on any tour all by yourself. Once you know a bit of camera settings and tricks, it may take a few more safaris to be a notch up as a photographer. And how wrong I was!
“On my tour to Corbett, my second grand tour after Bandhavgarh, I realised that the Toehold tour is a staple for an amateur wildlife photographer.
“My husband and I set out on this Corbett tour with extreme excitement and hopeful aspiration of having heavenly experiences. And Corbett presented itself as a lovely photo album to us.
“Spotting and photographing more than 80 birds in a span of six days was like going through a bird book. A tiger chasing a spotted deer and our gypsy trailing that tiger was almost too exciting to handle, and photographing the yellow-throated marten – one of the rarest mammals to sight – was the most exciting moment of the tour.
“But Corbett is a gem even without its wildlife sightings, which is what I set out to show in this photograph. On the first day, we moved through the dense sal forests and got out of it to land into this valley with a grassland carpet and cloud chandeliers. It was marvellous.
“Life seems to come a full circle in places like Corbett. It will not take us long to return there to witness life’s magical moments and fill them in our hearts and cameras forever.
“But a Corbett tour without the pack leader Sachin Rai is something we don’t want to try. Words are not enough to say what support, source of knowledge and inspiration he was for us. Thanks a ton!”
Deepti Aravind is an ardent follower of nature, wildlife and “everything around them”, who dons several roles – as a mom, a fashion designer, a content writer, and a classical dancer, having been in the past a business analyst and teacher, amongst others. However, says she, the avidity of photography has remained with her all these years while the other roles and hobbies cut paths every so often.
She developed the ‘eye for a click’ as a teenager, and tried several cameras but with little success – until she took a photography basics workshop and subsequently a few tours by Toehold, which gave wings to her passion. Having a DSLR and Toehold on her side, she says, made it possible for her to fulfill her dream of making good images, even as she splits her time between her hobby and her fast-growing son.
