Tiger Tracking in India

India’s largest city is a whirlwind of noise, fun and food: impromptu cricket matches in winding gullies, a twinkly-eyed barter in the Chor Bazaar, the first, fiery bite of a potato-stuffed vada pav. Lavish, dome-topped palaces stand tall, while the waterfront is illuminated by the Gateway of India. Boisterous, busy and brimming with opportunity, this high-energy city is as theatrical as a Bollywood plot-twist.

Dominated by the Satpura Hills and the winding Pench River, this is central India at its most untamed, a rolling carpet of long, yellow grasses and teak forests. Most travellers are drawn by the chance of spotting tigers, though the dense woodland means safaris here feel thrillingly remote. Pench is also home to sambar deer, Asian elephants, grey hornbills and troops of langurs that leap through the trees.

In 1973, Kanha participated in India’s Project Tiger conservation campaign and the park remains prime territory for spotting the elusive big cats. Along with Pench National Park, it’s thought that Kanha’s mighty sal forests are rumored to have inspired Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, although encounters with its rare wildlife are far from a work of fiction: as well as tigers, there are striped hyenas, Indian pangolins and the marsh-dwelling barasingha deer, while the park’s remote tribes are the ancestral guardians of this stirring landscape. 

Bandhavgarh National Park sprawls beneath a grand 10th-century fort. Between sweeping grasslands and lush thickets of bamboo, visitors keep their eyes peeled for leopards lazing in the mouths of mysterious caves or tigers cooling off in secluded pools. Beyond the big cat encounters, there are wolves, sloth bears and mighty gaurs, plus hundreds of species of birds and butterflies that dip in and out of the canopy. 

This vast metropolis surrounding the capital, New Delhi, is a frenetic web at the heart of the nation, sending winding roads and railways in all directions – though Delhi has much to keep travelers within its grand, historic grip: the crimson towers of the Red Fort, former home of Mughal emperors; the grand palms and lavish mausolea of the Lodi Gardens, and the bustling bazaars of Chandni Chowk, where everything, from heaps of spices to ornate rugs, is sold side by side.