This week on Sentient Snippets is beauty beyond the senses, untamed spirits, unknown realms, wondering eyes, and mortality over morality.
There is learning here, like a fervent confession of one’s own heart, that there is a certain kind of solitude that remains unaffected even in togetherness. And that’s isolated wisdom that the wild grants you. Generously. You will bear the sweet strain your ears feel when you try to hear them them walk, because seeing alone isn’t enough, because this beauty remains beyond senses.
Lion couple, Masai Mara, by Sachin Rai
Experience it firsthand on our ‘The Great Migration’ and ‘Big Cat Week’ Photo Tours.
In artful hiding, in filtered light working its way through the thick trees, in the unruly beauty of the forests of Pantanal is an untamed jaguar, his presence almost anarchic amidst all the stillness and his movement fluid-like. He is light, light that dribbles through the flesh of you to somewhere deeper and stirs your presence in the same land as his.
Jaguar, the Pantanal, by Jayanth Sharma
Experience it on our ‘The Phantom and the Wetlands’ Photography Expedition.
Can you possibly, when your eyes are locked with theirs, discern what this gaze means? How they look right through you, Krishna and her (not so) little cub, like you had turned into a ghost! Oh, it’s worth being reduced so beautifully before these creatures whose aura means no less than magic, creatures who can transport you to a new world, even if it’s all in your mind, and liberate you in realms you never knew existed before.
T19 (Krishna) and male cub, Ranthambhore National Park, by Phillip Ross
Experience it firsthand on our ‘Tiger Fortress’ Ranthambhore Photography Tour.
Perched on a moss-ridden tree trunk is a pair of moist, probing eyes. A lion-tailed macaque’s honey-hued gaze will make up for the binary colours that it’s known for, and that’s precisely why what you feel might always be more than just black and white. What do those eyes tell you when you look at them with yours, diseased with wonder and curiosity that’s almost gluttonous?
Lion-tailed macaque baby, Anaimalai, by Sachin Rai
Experience it firsthand on our ‘Rainforest Ramble’ Anaimalai Photo Tour.
There is no remorse there. And no pride either. When the forest shivers are blurring out the ends and beginnings and the land and the sky, you’ll know that there exists a world beyond the right and the wrong. Don’t fight a gasp back. Just let it out as you watch a suave tigress morphing into a powerful hunter.
Tigress with wild boar kill, Tadoba, by Rahul Sachdev
Experience it firsthand on our ‘Feline Fortune’ Tadoba Tour.