In The Realm Of Unicorns II - The Big Bull

Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary ; Assam

There are very few experiences which are as primally intimidating as being up close and eye to eye with a big male Rhino who is marching towards you with his eyes locked in. It’s downright scary and the Rhino knows this. We need to rewind a little here though and get a little understanding of the habitat and characters involved here to better understand these situations that unfold in the realm of Unicorns. The thing is that most reserves in Assam have the roads at a higher level than the plains where the animals are at. It’s pretty much the same scene with the highways and towns here cause Assam is a flood plain and the roads have to be elevated to protect them from the annual floods. This necessity of elevated roads though plays a major role in our interactions with and our photos of our subjects because the resultant habitat always places our subjects at a lower level and at an angle. It also creates a demarcation of sorts between their territory and ours during a safari with the animals having to put in extra effort for a road crossing. In fact, even Elephants wait for the herd to collect together before attempting a road crossing and you will always find them crossing together and carefully after checking left and right just like how you taught your kids.

The elevational barrier of sorts provides a fake sense of security to everyone concerned and most Rhino and Elephant charges at vehicles happen during these road crossings. Needless to say, that you never want to be charged at by these beasts cause while a Lion or Tiger may achieve nothing by charging at a vehicle, a Rhino or Elephant can flip the heaviest SUV easily. In the world of wildlife safaris, these usually gentle giants are in reality the most dangerous for us and they know it well. They also know that we know and that’s why they often mock charge at us just for the fun and amusement of watching us scamper away. I’ve faced quite a few threats and fake charges by Elephants and the sighting that taught me how to balance out pictures of the oddly shaped Rhino was actually a sighting that turned into a fake charge which I wrote about in “Too Close For Comfort”. I finally managed levelled pictures of my subject from a close distance on the road that time and the pictures came out a lot better than with my subjects in the ditch but that experience came at the cost of being charged at for my subject’s amusement though. Well, I was in Pobitora in March looking for just that because I’d heard that this little reserve had little roads on the same level as the Rhinos who I wanted another go at. I wanted levelled close-up pictures with my current cam set up and I was as ready as my subjects who would come armed with their bag of tricks for nosey tourists.

I saw Him right after the sighting of the sub adult Rhino whom I wrote about in “ In The Realm Of Unicorns I ” and you see what I saw in that moment in Pic : 1. He wasn’t just at level, he was a little higher up and that picture for me, shows every reason why you should be wary of a full grown male Rhino. That’s a protagonist shot in my book on any day and shows why these guys pretty much rule the plains and aren’t even bothered about Tigers in these parts on most days. They can be docile but don’t mess with Rhinos and especially the males. You just don’t do that man. These guys can weigh upto 3000 Kgs and move that weight at upto 60 kmph.

My policy in my dealings with most large animals is to follow the lead of the naturalist who I am with and I always try to ensure that I have the guy with most the experience driving me. Most animals have their own temperaments and it’s the experienced local who usually knows those traits. When I ran into this big boy in Pobitora, I knew that Umesh who was driving me had been at this range for 13 years and that Rhino and Umesh probably have enough history for me to remain being the inconsequential photographer. Well, that history and the constant clicking of my camera in that otherwise quiet afternoon made him notice alright and he stepped up. He then grazed a little and when we didn’t leave, he stepped up to us some more and grazed some more and right then as he looked up towards us again, things flipped.

I didn’t catch it right then but I did catch my Dude sticking his tongue out it in Pic : 12 and then start to march right at us. Yeah he literally stuck his tongue out first man and I’m gust gonna leave that at chance’s corner without further speculation. His stride was different and he wasn’t ambling around to graze. My guy was walking straight up to us and I guarantee you that despite my confidence in Umesh’s experience and the reassurance that I got when I saw him take out his phone to record the ongoings, I was starting to get pretty scared while clicking away at the marching figure that just refused to fit in the frame anymore. The angle went bad pretty soon after that and I stopped trying eventually as it became impossible to make a decent frame of the marching giant. He was too big, too close and his head was just too low in comparison to the rest of his body from that close a distance. Umesh just kept recording in the front seat with a smile on his face though as my guy slowed his march first and finally stopped a few feet from the car. Umesh just kept smiling and as the giant turned away finally, he started the car and reversed out slow and unhurried. Yeah ! these guys knew each other well was the impression I got in that moment cause my subject was continuously glancing back as he backed off and my Driver was casually checking his video out on the phone while ambling away from a huge male Rhino who had just attempted a fake charge at him. These guys had danced many times before alright and I’d been lucky enough to get closer to a huge male Rhino than ever before thanks to that. I knew I had the Rhino Shot I wanted right at the start of the sighting too. The usual suspects of Pobitora had delivered on day one and along with the discovery of the Jackals, the rest of this little getaway looked pretty promising for me right then, if the rain didn’t ruin it that is.

This sighting was a huge lesson in photography for me cause it totally highlights the limitations of my medium. My lens is great in magnifying little details of small creatures but perhaps limited in catching the enormity of the bigger ones. You cannot show the feelings that big subjects instil in you with their nature at all with the 2D tools at our disposal. My big boy looks like he’s smiling in so many of the pictures here but trust me, he didn’t look like that at all to me while he was marching straight at us. It was scary, very scary at that and two dimensions cannot do it justice at all. That said, he was goofing off for sure cause he didn’t even break into a trot to charge and that’s where the experience of a good local expert paid its dividends for me during the sighting. Id come to get close to Rhinos. You can’t get closer than I’d just been by the end of this experience. Period. The other lesson from the sighting is that every scary looking beast is just scary in that look frozen in time either in your mind or your cam. One look at the various pictures of my big guy clearly shows the deviation from the “hero shot” in Pic : 1 to the tongue sticking out in Pic : 12 and everything else in between. I guess that we just need to remember that all of us are products of the chemicals running inside us at any time and in that aspect the Rhino and I are both prisoners in the same prison. My big boy didn’t break into a run and flip our vehicle over cause he wasn’t in the mood for that but the situation might just have been different if a female was in the mix and he had breeding on his mind and that’s why you need the local expert.

Well, my Big Boy wasn’t the last Rhino that Umesh and I saw in our day and a half at Pobitora this time around but Rhinos stopped being something that we slowed down for every time after this experience. It was unsaid but we both knew that Big Boy’s performance would be tough to match for sure. My next post about the Unicorns of my home turf will probably get into more of their lives now that I have this memorable sighting typed down. I just wish the photos could do that sighting justice. Oh well, nothing to be done about that is there? I guess some things just have to be felt and I’m perhaps luckier for it being that way.