IF you have travelled anywhere in these days of pandemic, the chances are it is to a trashy Oklahoma animal park via the Netflix hit Tiger King.
While the show divulges every juicy detail about the titular Joe Exotic — from polygamous gay marriages to his flailing country music career and failed murder-for-hire plot — it tells us very little about those big cats he supposedly cared for.
9
9
It might come as little surprise to anyone who has seen the docu-series that the captive tiger population in the US is estimated to be upwards of 7,000. That is almost double the global wild population of around 3,900 cats.
But if Tiger King has taught us anything, it is that these creatures are best appreciated not in some beat-up backyard cage in Oklahoma but in their natural habitat half a world away.
Go to Africa if you want to see cheetahs or lions. But for tigers, your best bet is Asia.
Safari enthusiasts should zero in on India, which is home to 70 per cent of the world’s free-roaming tiger population.
9
9
On a pre-pandemic visit with PureQuest Adventures, I went in search of the wild tigers living in Kanha National Park, following their fresh tracks through its talc-soft dirt.
Kanha straddles the Maikal Hills of the Satpura Range in the heart of India. It is a vast landscape of dense forests and wide open savannas that forms a rare green patch in this crowded nation of 1.3billion people.
Photographing big cats in Africa is easy enough. But there are no guaranteed sightings of tigers on an Indian safari.
The striped felines are free to roam their reserves at will. So finding them is a mix of luck and skill. The expert spotter in my safari jeep on day one flicked his binoculars left and right, though I soon realised his ears were doing the real work.
9
He heeded the warning calls of langur monkeys (which scan the perimeter from treetops) and of spotted deer (who smell tigers from a mile away) as we zipped around the park.
Tiger numbers in India are believed to have dropped from about 40,000 at the beginning of the 19th century to just 1,800 in the early 1970s, when India launched its seminal conservation programme Project Tiger.
Kanha was one of the original nine reserves set up under that programme (there are now 50) and is that rare place where you can witness a good-news story in global conservation.
India’s latest tiger census found that the nation’s population of the mighty cats rose from 2,226 in 2014 to more than 3,000 in 2019.
9
Parks such as Kanha in the so-called “tiger state” of Madhya Pradesh have played key roles in the recovery, all while becoming increasingly visited by foreign tourists.
That is partly thanks to the resurgent popularity of Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 classic The Jungle Book, buoyed by recent movie adaptations. By day two, I had seen peacocks ambling through the woods, a pair of jackals racing down a meadow and a rare barasingha swamp deer hiding in the brush.
I had also photographed a menagerie of colourful kingfishers and watched termites build sandcastle-like mounds out of the burnt-orange earth.
I know deep down this ought to have made me happy — that all animals should carry equal clout.
9
But the tiger is such a rare beast that I would have been gutted if I didn’t get at least one glance at its majestic orange robe.
Then, on day three, it happened. The tigress appeared on top of a ridge, flaunting a self-assurance only apex predators possess.
Her muscles tightened with each step as she surveyed the land, her coat shining under the low spotlight of the morning sun.
She was, by all accounts, Indian royalty.
In the excitement of the moment, I had somehow missed the larger tiger — her mate — hiding in the brush. She walked over to him, brandished her two-inch canines . . . and then the pair wagged their muscled feline butts off into the darkness of a nearby forest.
9
The whole scene lasted all of five minutes. But it was so cinematic, it felt as if I had watched an entire nature special in the flesh.
Back at the Kanha Earth Lodge, a well-camouflaged safari camp in the park’s buffer zone, my safari-mates and I toasted our success with a potent toddy made by the local Baiga tribe from the flowers of the sacred mahua tree.
It tasted sour but our spirits were high. We had prowled the lands that inspired The Jungle Book and faced our very own Shere Khan.
It was a hard-won victory, but the best experiences always are.
To see tigers in their natural habitat — once flying to faraway lands becomes possible again — is worth the great effort that entails.
Even if there are no Joe Exotics waiting there to serenade you with a twanging Oklahoma tune.
9
GO: India
GETTING / STAYING THERE: PureQuest Adventures features a safari in the Kanha National Park on two of its tailor-made itineraries.
The 13-night Jungle Book Adventure includes Bhopal, Satpura, Pench, Kanha and Delhi.
The Central Indian Safari is a 13-night adventure taking in Delhi, Jabalpur, Kanha, Bandhavgarh and Panna National Parks as well as Orcha and Agra.
See purequest.com/destinations/india.
Prices correct at time of going to press and could be subject to change and lifting of current restrictions on travel.
