Maya Enchants, Maya is the crowd puller, Maya generates economy for this place, Maya made Tadoba popular to the extent that whenever we talk about Tadoba Maya’s name definitely comes up.
If she goes missing for a few days we start feeling helpless, because she has garnered a larger than life fame! Her contribution is beyond what we can see. Her contribution towards her own stripes is TOO enormous. She is amazing because since she became an adult, almost all the male tigers of Tadoba started venturing into her territory. This trend is still continued if we look into the different males who have visited her in the three years of her life, it adds up to 6 to 7 different males. There were days when she was sighted with 2 to 3 different males in a single day. But she managed well, then she had a first litter of cubs, she in fact lost her first litter, she slowly matured as tigress, as a mother, she kept allowing the male tigers to visit her, then she had her next litter.
BIG ? Who is the father of her cubs? Amidst utter confusion and too much speculation, she kept her cubs well secured, then she declared the identity of their father. Surprise again! she went for the “Handicap principle” in that none of the supposedly cool dudes got the chance to father her cubs. Then on she kept on amazing us by the way she reared her cubs and kept meeting all the “visitors” be it tourist or the different striped males. But the story doesn’t end there, because of her the other females neighboring her territory got the chance to rear their cubs without being bothered too much by the other males. In a crisis period of gender imbalance in the tiger community that is a huge contribution and for me just because of that fact she is one of those most amazing tigresses I have seen.
p.s. Now a days, the visitors seem to be already entrapped in Maya’s aura way before seeing her, it is frequent request to us naturalists at svasara to especially see “Maya” even if they have had the good luck of sighting other tigers.
To follow new updates about her and see her beautiful pictures, please see and like her photo album Maya (P2/T12), the reigning Queen of Pandharpauni on our facebook page.
