Why a tiger safari in India is a cool, cheaper alternative to an African safari. Photo / Getty Images
An African safari is no doubt a trip worthy of its wish-list credentials, but for those of us looking for a cheaper, quieter and equally enthralling experience, there’s nothing better than an Indian tiger safari, writes Tamara Hinson
After two days in Madhya Pradesh’s Bandhavgarh National Park, it’s clear safaris are done differently in India – or at least, in this particular park. To start with, radios are banned, so I explore Bandhavgarh not to a soundtrack of crackling radio calls but to the birdcalls of species such as the Indian roller, famous for its pale blue tail. There’s another advantage to the radio ban. During safaris in African countries, I’ve lost count of the moments when my Jeep has been one of several surrounding an anxious-looking lion. Or when, moments after frantic radio messages from a fellow guide, our driver has announced it’s time for a “Ferrari safari”, before hitting the gas and speeding to the site of a kill, determined to ensure his guests get their coveted shot of African wildlife in all its blood-soaked brutality.
In India, my first sighting of a tiger in Bandhavgarh National Park occurs on my second day. The big cat stalks along a raised hillock, oblivious to our presence. We spot the tiger as the sun’s setting, and for 10 blissful uninterrupted minutes watch him plod through the undergrowth, pausing occasionally to sniff the air. Eventually, the distant rumble of an engine grows louder. Another Jeep appears and we move on, feeling smug about our uninterrupted encounter.
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The sighting occurs in Tala, one of Bandhavgarh’s three zones. Tala is where the park began, before its staggered expansion. The most popular zone, it’s typified by vast grasslands and thick forests of fig and cotton trees. It’s also home to several archaeological remains, including a 10th-century fort. From my Jeep, I can just about pick out its crumbling walls, but it’s in an area out of bounds to visitors. Park authorities, keen to showcase one of India’s oldest forts, allow visitors to hike to the ruins on one specified day every year. Given the size of the tiger I spotted earlier, I can’t help but think this is one activity I’d duck out of.
My favourite area is Khitauli Zone, a wonderfully vast wilderness with dense forests and soaring hills that double as perfect locations to sip from flasks of chai and watch the sunset. This particular zone also has thriving populations of nilgai (Asian antelopes) and chinkara (gazelles). It’s worth noting that the flimsy fences surrounding the park aren’t there to keep these creatures – along with its tigers, elephants and sloth bears in – as all of these creatures are regularly spotted in local villages), but to mark the park’s shifting perimeter. Today, only a few villagers remain inside its boundaries. Many are wildlife rangers, and I regularly spot them pedalling along the dusty footpaths on creaking bicycles, armed with nothing more than a cane. These guides know the park like the back of their hand – no mean feat considering it covers 105sq km and is surrounded by a buffer zone (a protected area where limited human activity is permitted) covering 400sq km.
What’s more, the vast expanse of wilderness I explore is only 20 per cent of the entire park – the rest is closed to the public for the benefit of its wildlife. After three days in Bandhavgarh, I can count the number of other Jeeps we’ve passed on one hand, which brings me to another aspect that sets India’s national parks apart. The vast majority of the passengers in these Jeeps are Indians. During safaris in Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, the only people I met who came from these countries were the guides and staff tending to the needs to the (mostly Western) guests.
Indians, it turns out, love their safaris. Not just because they’re cheaper and more accessible than in Africa: none of the lodges I’ve visited in Zambia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe have charged less than about NZ$1140 a night. At Bandhavgarh Jungle Lodge, nightly rates start at around $940 on an all-inclusive basis, which includes two safaris. Over the years Indians have become invested in the survival of their country’s tigers, and this attitude is due to the efforts of a man named Kailash Sankhala.
In the 1950s Sankhala worked for the Forest Service, issuing hunting permits to those who came to places like Bandhavgarh to shoot tigers. His friends were baffled that he’d never shot one himself, and he eventually did so to silence their jeers. But he was so traumatised by the act of killing a tiger that he vowed to dedicate the rest of his life to their protection. He realised tigers were on a fast track to extinction and in the early 1970s convinced then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to ban tiger hunting. She subsequently tasked him with heading Project Tiger (which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2023). Widely regarded as the world’s most successful tiger conservation project, its main aim was the creation of protected parks and reserves, along with so-called green corridors that aided tigers’ movement between these parks, reducing inbreeding. Sankhala died in 1994 but his legacy lives on, not only in the form of the Indian Ministry of Environment, Forest and Wildlife’s Kailash Sankhala Fellowship, created in his honour, but the work of his grandson, Amit, who runs Tiger Trust, a not-for-profit established by his grandfather.
Bandhavgarh will always have a special place in Amit’s heart. To start with, he owns Bandhavgarh Jungle Lodge, the property where I’m staying. A sizeable chunk of the profits goes to Tiger Trust, along with various other wildlife organisations supported by Amit, who spends much of his time tracking snow leopards in Nepal. I meet him at the lodge during a rare lull in his jet-setting, and he tells me about his earliest memories of Bandhavgarh. The lodge, just outside the park’s boundary, was opened in 1989 by his father, Pradeep, and Amit tells me about school holidays spent here at a time when the park didn’t have fences. Amit and his schoolfriends would stay at the lodge and hop on the backs of semi-tame elephants that trundled over to the park before dropping them home at the end of the day.
Amit explains that his father helped save India’s tigers by convincing the public that they were worth saving, and that tiger safari tourism could provide a valuable source of income. His tactic worked, and Indians changed their view of the big cats. A brilliant example of this shift in attitude is the case of Ustad, a tiger that lived in Ranthambore National Park. In 2015, Ustad disappeared. Protests took place throughout the country, led by members of the public demanding to know Ustad’s whereabouts. Ustad eventually turned up in an Udaipur zoo, where he died. But the protests sent a clear message to the government, reminding the powers that be of the public’s determination that India’s tigers needed better protection.
Today, the approach championed by Kailash, his son and grandson has transformed tigers’ fortunes, and their numbers are at an all-time high. In Indian parks, there’s almost no poaching. Indians are proud of their tigers and how they’ve bounced back, and feel invested in their survival – not simply because of the income generated by their presence but because of their pride in the fact that their survival is one of the world’s greatest success stories. And, despite numerous brushes with extinction, this attitude has helped India’s other endangered species, too. “Today, almost all the wildlife which existed in India centuries ago still exists,” says Amit when discussing how the public’s attitude has been crucial. “No other country can say that. Yes, there’s some conflict, but the tigers, sloth bears, snow leopards and elephants? They’re still here.”
For more things to see and do in India, visit incredibleindia.org
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