THE CAT WHISPERER

Indian photographer Mithun Hunugund has nurtured a love affair with the world’s big cats for 15 years. Every glimpse still gives him goosebumps, writes Natasha Dragun.

Through a haze of hotheadedness and unprovoked angst, I vaguely remember how I spent my formative years as a teenager. Moping around the house, complaining about the fact I had nothing to wear; spending hours getting ready to go out to that club on a Saturday night; listening to ‘music’ at ungodly volumes. Generally not contributing much more than a scowl and a dirty look to society. Meanwhile, 10,000 kilometres northwest (and a couple of decades later) on the subcontinent, teenage Mithun Hunugund was navigating apertures and ISOs in order to capture the beauty – and document the plight – of India’s big cats. Whatever the weather, he would spend hours, days, hiking through the jungles of India’s southern Karnataka with his forest-officer father, identifying obscure flora and fauna and teaching himself how to use a camera with every confident stride.

My misspent youth got me a few detentions – Mithun’s upbringing secured him a job with National Geographic. “As a kid, I loved going into the jungle, to the national parks with a pair of binoculars,” Mithun says of his time roaming Dandeli Wildlife Sanctuary. The dense forest range is home to everything from black panthers and Indian sloth bears to monkeys and Asiatic elephants – there are 200 species of birds here alone.

“I saw so many amazing things that I thought it was time to show the world the beauty of these creatures. That’s how I got into photography, and I have never looked back.”

This is also where Mithun’s fascination with big cats began. “I saw my first tiger in the wild in 1997,” says Mithun, now 33 years old. “I can still hear the deer going bonkers. I knew something was up.

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Then a massive male tiger stalked out of a bamboo thicket. It was a spectacle I’ll never forget. I had goosebumps. From that moment I was fascinated – by the way they walk, their behaviour, the length of their whiskers, how they flick their tail, their agility, how bold they are.”

It became Mithun’s life mission to track big cats and study their behaviour.

Into the wild

While Mithun has travelled the world to spot big cats – from Africa and Sri Lanka to South America – he’s most at home in his current backyard: the Kabini forest reserve of Karnataka. “It’s known as ‘Tiger Land’ for a reason,” says Mithun. While this immense swathe of wilderness once housed hunting lodges of the Maharaja of Mysore, creatures today are only shot in photographs. Mithun has personally taken thousands of snaps here and spent thousands more hours waiting for the right moment to press ‘click’.

“Wildlife photography is all about patience – in the jungle, nothing is scripted and you never know what you’re going to encounter. I can sit and wait for days for that 10 seconds of magic,” Mithun says. Indeed, he has done just that on many occasions.

He recalls spending more than a year tracking a black panther with a lustrous coat named Saaya, the sole member of his species in the Nagarhole National Park in Kabini, as part of The Real Black Panther photo-documentary series for National Geographic. And then another six days glued to a single spot after he heard them mating nearby.

“They had made a large kill and would not move until it was over. That is where my knowledge and years of experience following and tracking the panther came in handy. I just had to wait at one of his favourite paths on the edge of his territory where he would bring her.”

Which he did, one wintery morning, almost a week later. It was worth the wait: Saaya and Cleopatra, his leopardess mate, appeared in front of Mithun’s camera. His legendary photo of the pair is – very appropriately – called The Eternal Couple.

“I’ve seen big cats more times than I can count,” Mithun says. “But I felt like a kid when I saw Saaya and Cleopatra together. The joy was unexplainable.” It’s an emotion that guests on Mithun’s guided wildlife expeditions also experience. “Sometimes, it’s all people can do but cry when they see a big cat.”

While these tears are shed out of happiness, Mithun wells up at the thought of these majestic creatures being harmed.

“They know how to overcome natural threats – they learn to survive and adapt. But man-made threats are unpredictable. Wildlife corridors have been diminishing, which leads to mananimal conflicts. Animals like tigers need more space than others, and when the forest areas diminish, they enter human settlements, preying on domesticated animals. This creates panic and eventually leads to conflict.”

While India’s track record for big cat conservation is impressive – the country’s tiger population has grown in recent years – there is still more that can be done. And Mithun is on a mission to open the world’s eyes.

“If I can make just one person more aware of these beautiful creatures, and create an environmental steward, then all those hours huddled in the rain and mud is well worth it.”

For prints: @mithunhphotography