Participating in the Sondrio Film Festival was a wonderful and enriching experience. This is the first festival I have attended where there is such a strong people's participation unlike other festivals which are more about business. So it gave me great pleasure when I saw people of all ages - young and old coming to see films on environment and conservation and participating in the festival with such enthusiasm. I also enjoyed interacting with students. Sondrio is a beautiful town and while I enjoyed walking through the town and soaking in its ambience, it was equally interesting to talk to the warm and hospitable people of Sondrio. In fact once I was enjoying a cup of coffee and asked for the bill but was told by the owner that the coffee was on him because he had enjoyed watching the Tiger Film so much.
I am currently filming a third story of the tiger saga. It is a unique story of two cubs who lost their mothers to an incurable disease The cubs went missing and the forest department officials were worried about the cubs. One fine day the forest officials were surprised to see images of the two cubs captured on the camera trap with a male tiger. Further investigations revealed that it was their father. The forest officials were on the alert- were the cubs at risk from the father? To their great surprise they found that the cubs had an unlikely caretaker in their father. This male tiger has taken the role of the mother for his two daughters.
The other story I am following is that of two orphan cubs successfully hand raised by officials of the forest department.
Tiger conservation has many aspects to it and one amongst them is taking care of tiger cubs who are orphaned. When a mother dies, the cubs are at high risk - they often die due to attacks from predators These are two unique stories that provide interesting studies of how tiger cubs do learn to survive in the forest despite having lost the natural protector - their mothers.