Jungle Book

The McBrides are in India for the first time,and their obsession with the lions is evident when they talk. In Pune,they will deliver a lecture on nature and wildlife,organised by Damle Safaris,at the National Film Archives of India (NFAI) on January 22.

A wildlife researcher,Christopher completed a degree in wildlife management from the University of California at Humboldt. He has written three books on lions and authored several scientific papers. The couple currently run a camp called ‘McBrides Camp’ in the north-eastern part of the Kafue river. He and Charlotte are also writing a book about their experiences at McBrides’ Camp.

“ I was teaching at University of California at Humboldt for a long time after which I took up a research in age and size categories of Lion Prey in the Chobe National Park,Botswana. I was watching a pride of lions for six months. That is when I came across two white cubs. They weren’t relevant to my thesis then,but I continued the research and came up with the book,The White Lions of Timbavati in 1977,” he recalls.

In fact,the Timbavati Game Reserve was owned by Christopher’s father. “I got interested in wildlife as a child. My father would take me around the camp on foot,and every time,we found something new,” he says.

Lessons from the couple’s life on the camp are both intriguing and interesting. Sixty-five-year-old Christopher does a mean imitation of lions roaring as well as the cry of a hyena. “My first lesson was to respect their territory. Any kind of obstruction was not taken kindly by them,” says Charlotte,as she describes meeting elephants and lions. “The second lesson was that the lions are nocturnal creatures. We followed them at night on several occasions.” During their research,they identified the lions by the whisker dot pattern or the crack in their ear or a scar.

The couple will travel to Delhi,Agra,Jaipur,Bharatpur and Pench before they head back to South Africa.