July 30, 2020: The first wildlife trip turned surreal for a Pune-based photographer who ended up clicking a semi melanistic leopard after a two-hour-long wait at Maharashtra's Tadoba Reserve.

"It was my first ever wildlife trip where we were looking mostly for tigers. We started looking for leopard on our last day of safari after having enough sighting of tigers," said Abhishek Pagnis, a Pune-based photographer about his experience of clicking the wild cat which went viral on the web.

He shared that he had to wait for around two hours to get the ''perfect'' shot, which was taken around 5 pm in June.

Speaking more about the experience, Mr Pagnis said that before the leopard was sighted, he heard some alarming calls of the animals, including deers and langurs.

Abhishek Pagnis shared that he had to wait for around two hours to get the ''perfect'' shot, which was taken around 5 pm in June.

"The leopard was behind the bushes drinking water. We had 20 minutes of decent sighting followed by almost 15 minutes of very good sighting for photography," he added.

In another incident earlier, a photograph of a black panther had created a stir on social media. Reacting to it, Mr Pagnis said, "That was a melanistic leopard, which is also known as a black panther and it was clicked in Karnataka's Kabini forest. However, who I captured was a semi melanistic leopard which is different from the other."