“Tyger, Tyger burning bright / In the forests of the night,” wrote William Blake in 1794, having only ever seen a tiger in a London menagerie. But his famous lines immediately sprang to mind when I saw my first wild tiger in Bandhavgarh National Park in central India. “Burning bright” was the perfect description. In twilight, the big cat’s stripes flickered in the long grass like flames.

The stress of my journey to the park melted away. I had flown from Delhi to Jabalpur, and from there it was a 100-mile taxi journey over rough roads to my hotel outside the park boundary. I arrived at midnight and enjoyed one of the most refreshing beers of my life.

PHOTO: © RICHARD NEWTON

It was a very short night. I had to be up at 4:30 a.m. to catch the open Jeep for the morning game drive. It was cold and pitch black, and I was nervous about my prospects. Would I see any tigers at all? In my favor was the fact that, with around 75 individuals, Bandhavgarh boasts the highest tiger concentration in India.

The first sighting occurred within 20 minutes. There he was, a young male, aflame in the thick grass on the edge of a clearing. A lifetime of African safaris hadn’t prepared me for this. I had seen countless lions and leopards on safaris, but none of them patrolled their domain with quite the same imperiousness as this Bengal tiger. Here was the true King of the Jungle.

In my two days at Bandhavgarh, I enjoyed a few more tiger sightings as well as rewarding encounters with deer, nilgai (an Indian antelope), blackbuck and wild elephants. I then undertook another long (six-hour) cross-country taxi ride to Kanha National Park, the setting for Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.

At Kanha, the tiger sightings came with another dimension. When trackers found a mature male resting some distance from the nearest road, we waited in the Jeep for another mode of transport to arrive: an Asian elephant, ridden by a mahout. Clambering onto the howdah — the wooden platform on the elephant’s back — was no easy task. I had to balance on the Jeep’s rollbar and swing myself up, pulling a muscle in the process. Once I was settled, off we went.

Riding an elephant proved far from smooth. My wooden perch rocked back and forth and from side to side. Thankfully, it was a relatively short journey. When we stopped, I had something else to worry about: the tiger, lying more or less level with me on a shaded bank. He was far too close for comfort. My heart pounded as I took photos.

© DREAMSTIME AGENCY

Viewing big cats from the back of an elephant is just one of the differences between an Indian and African safari. Another major difference is that, with the exception of a few government-run forest rest houses (for which demand is very high), most accommodation sits outside the park boundaries, requiring a pre-dawn drive to the gate every morning. Facilities within the parks remain rudimentary.

Yet these logistical hurdles are a small price to pay for immersion in an untamed wilderness. Unlike the wide-open African savannahs, where you can often spot wildlife from miles away, the dense sal forests of Central India demand patience. They force you to listen for the alarm calls of monkeys and deer, turning every drive into a sensory challenge.

Sitting on the deck of my lodge on the final evening, watching the sunset turn the horizon to flame, the echoes of Blake’s poem returned to me. The wild Bengal tiger is not merely an animal to be checked off a list; it is a majestic, fiery presence that dominates its domain.

INFO TO GO
Jabalpur Airport, the closest domestic airport to both Bandhavgarh and Kanha national parks, welcomes scheduled flights from Delhi (DEL), Mumbai (BOM) and other major cities. The 100-mile taxi transfers to the parks cost $35–100, depending on the vehicle. Taxis can also be arranged for transfers between the parks. An alternative access point for Kanha National Park, Nagpur International Airport, offers more frequent flights and lies approximately 160 miles from the park. Nagpur is also convenient for Pench National Park, another tiger stronghold, located 60 miles from the airport.