Shiladitya Chaudhury nurses many passions. The city is well aware of his culinary ventures that have become landmarks. His passion for the wild is also well known among his close kin and people who share the same love for the rugged and raw terrains charged with the extraordinary energy of wild animals. Documenting his experiences has come in the form of books like Roar and Wild Gujarat, in which he focused on the majestic beauty of the tiger and its habitat. This time, he moves beyond the periphery of India and treats wildlife lovers to an enchanting coffee-table book on Kenya. Untamed Kenya was long overdue from a wildlife aficionado for whom Africa, and especially Kenya, is the ultimate destination.

Armed with his curious hat and camera, Chaudhury has been visiting Africa for decades. He said: “I have been travelling to Africa as a continent for the past one and a half decades. I have travelled extensively in the national parks and private conservancies of South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya. In fact, Kenya was love at first sight. Kenya’s wilderness possesses a remarkable diversity of character. The vast plains of the Maasai Mara National Reserve, the elephant-filled landscapes beneath Mount Kilimanjaro viewed from Amboseli National Park, the rugged terrain of Samburu National Reserve, and the quiet shorelines of Lake Nakuru National Park each offer a distinct sense of place. No two landscapes feel the same, and no two days in the wild unfold alike.” Every year, he waits eagerly to visit Kenya, like a child.

For Chaudhury, what began as a fascination with wildlife photography gradually became something far more personal. It transformed into an enduring relationship with the landscapes, silence and rhythms of the natural world. To condense an experience spanning decades into one book comes with the major challenge of selection. Reflecting on the question, he shared: “It was extremely challenging to select from more than 10,000 pictures taken over 13 visits to Kenya and put them into a document of 164 pages.” The result is a deeply personal book, Untamed Kenya, that speaks the universal language of the wild. The coffee-table book brings wild beasts and their stories to life in dramatic shots that speak of Chaudhury’s evolved relationship with the camera, the setting and the wildlife. He uses light as a third element to tell stories that are dreamy and entice the viewer to plan a trip to that African haven.

The rendezvous with Untamed Kenya starts with a close shot of an elephant, and we curiously ask what made him choose this beast over the others. “Though Africa is a Big Five country, with the lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant and African buffalo, the gigantic size of the African elephant creates a huge impact in print, especially if you are lucky enough to get low-angle shots,” justifies Chaudhury. The stoic gaze of the elephant, its majestic body that almost overpowers every other being and its graceful walk frozen in the low-angle close shot are a culmination of everything that the wild represents.

It might seem like another coffee-table book in the melee of documented narratives, but Untamed Kenya is more than that. It brings not just the beauty of the wild but also stories of animals’ lives, their relationships with other animals, their hunting skills and the law of the jungle. Chaudhury made sure to handpick a series of shots to tell a few stories. “My journey into the wild heart of Kenya was never meant to be just photography; it was meant to be witnessing some great moments of nature. With time, I was lucky to have witnessed and captured some great moments — the language of wind rustling through savannah grass, of distant thunder gathering above acacia silhouettes, of hooves trembling across endless plains. This ignited me to compile a pictorial coffee-table book on Kenya, where each photograph could portray a story,” said Chaudhury as he recounted the experience of being surrounded by elephants for an hour in the Maasai Mara. Another story talks about witnessing a rare moment of a lioness crying as she helplessly watched her cubs unable to cross a stream infested with crocodiles. It is stories like these that make Untamed Kenya more than a picture book; it offers lessons in patience, discipline and respecting the law of a land where humans are mere tourists.