Like every thing else about India, the nation’s immense community of protected areas gives a dizzying array of choices for vacationers. Deciding which to go to on an India safari isn’t any easy process (as of final rely, there are 104 nationwide parks in India plus 560 wildlife sanctuaries and 214 group reserves), however fortunately, Aditya Panda is right here to assist. A passionate conservationist, wildlife photographer, and Expedition Chief with Pure Habitat Adventures, Panda has devoted his life to exploring India’s wild locations—and to defending them. 

We lately caught up with Panda for a wide-ranging dialogue about his favourite nationwide parks—together with Kanha, Bandhavgarh and Kaziranga, all featured on Nat Hab’s Grand India Wildlife Journey—the wildlife you’ll encounter there, and what it’s like to trace tigers within the wild (we promise: his riveting description offers you chills). Go to this Good Nature Journey weblog once more quickly for the concluding installment of our two-part Q&A, the place Panda discusses India’s conservation successes (additionally immense), the crucial of ecotourism, and what we as vacationers can do to assist protect India’s wildlife sanctuaries—each on our travels and after we return house.

Tiger in Ranthambhore National Park India

What are among the high nationwide parks in India?

Due to the tiger’s glamour and magnetic draw, the highest wildlife locations in India largely embody our tiger reserves. This consists of Ranthambhore (in style in vacationer brochures due to its proximity to the Delhi-Agra-Jaipur “Golden Triangle”), Kanha, Bandhavgarh, Kaziranga, Bandipur, Tadoba and Sundarbans. Past the tiger reserves there are the likes of Gir Nationwide Park (the one house of the Asiatic lion), Hemis Nationwide Park (house to the snow leopard), Singalila Nationwide Park (the place you’ll be able to search for the crimson panda), plus different must-sees similar to Silent Valley Nationwide Park, Desert Nationwide Park within the Nice Indian Desert, and Valley of Flowers Nationwide Park.

Do you’ve gotten private favorites?

My high two favorites have all the time been Kanha and Kaziranga. I even have a particular place in my coronary heart for Similipal, Pench and Corbett nationwide parks, plus the protected areas of the Nilgiri mountains in southern India. I totally take pleasure in visiting Bandhavgarh, Ranthambhore and Tadoba nationwide parks for the wonderful tiger pictures alternatives they provide. There are simply too many others to checklist! I go to as lots of them as I can, then hold going again to those which have my coronary heart. I might spend the remainder of my lifetime visiting India’s protected areas and nonetheless not have the ability to test every of them off my checklist!

What makes Kanha and Bandhavgarh so particular?

The Central India Tiger Panorama is house to a 3rd of India’s tigers (about 1,000 tigers dwell right here), and Kanha and Bandhavgarh provide among the best tiger viewing wherever. I name Kanha the “Queen of Central India:” No reserve represents one of the best of the Central India Tiger Panorama and its conservation pedigree the way in which Kanha does (the park has all the time led the way in which in formulating administration finest practices which can be then applied in India’s different tiger reserves). Licensed Kanhaphiles like me genuinely imagine that nowhere does the tiger look as gorgeous because it does within the sal forests of Kanha. 

Bandhavgarh has all the time been well-known for its camera-friendly tigers. The park’s game-drive zones have a really excessive density of tigers they usually’ve all the time been snug round Jeeps, so it’s by far the most effective locations to observe and {photograph} these animals to your coronary heart’s content material. What’s extra, Bandhavgarh has lately turn into house to greater than 40 wild elephants. These herds, initially from jap India, have been the primary to “return” to central India in additional than a century.

These central India nature parks are additionally nice for leopards, sloth bears, wild canine, jackals, gaur (Indian bison), majestic arduous floor swamp deer (AKA barasingha) in Kanha, chinkara gazelles in Bandhavgarh, and blackbucks in Kanha. There’s wonderful birding available as properly.

Rhinoos in Kaziranga India

What makes Kaziranga in northeast India price exploring?

Nowhere in Asia, certainly nowhere exterior of East Africa, can one see such amount and number of giant mammals. Kaziranga is house to the most important variety of higher one-horned rhinoceros, Asian elephants, Asiatic water buffalo and jap swamp deer. It additionally sustains the best densities of tigers on this planet, however will not be one of the best place to see them (the tall, dense grasslands with their innumerable sport trails imply that tigers don’t all the time need to stroll on roads). On the Grand India Wildlife Journey, we’ve got our fill of tigers at Kanha and Bandhavgarh and go to Kaziranga to gradual the tempo down and revel in watching different megafauna. Kaziranga additionally shelters otters, hog deer and hog badgers, and has a wealthy primate variety. That is one a part of India the place you’ll be able to search for typical Southeast Asian species similar to western hoolock gibbons, capped langurs and Assamese macaques.  

Tiger in Bandhavgarh National Park India

So, tigers aren’t the one stars on an India safari. Nonetheless, we’ve got to ask: What’s it like monitoring one within the wild?

The tiger is a larger-than-life animal. It’s greater than one thing mortal. Or a minimum of it feels that approach. So, monitoring tigers is half the enjoyable. In all probability much more enjoyable than seeing one. It’s like monitoring a ghost. When one enters the jungle, normally every thing seems peaceable and quiet. There are deer grazing and monkeys shifting round. It takes some creativeness to really imagine that there are tigers roaming wild and free on the identical patch of earth that you’re on. This doubt can typically turn into consuming. Particularly if one’s first few sport drives are what we name “dry” drives. Then, once you come throughout pugmarks (tracks), it’s like somebody injected you with a dose of adrenaline. The primary bodily signal of the magical animal! 

What’s it prefer to see a wild tiger for the primary time?

If the jungle gods have graced you, a silhouette, a lot bigger than you had thought, seems, parting the grass or materializing from behind boulders in a stream. It seems to drift, noiselessly, as your eyes focus and your thoughts fathoms the truth of the state of affairs. Then you definitely may discover the orange and the stripes, then decide up the white patches on the animal’s face. Because it seems nearer, you begin seeing the small print of that nice head, indescribably good-looking, confidence written throughout it… these inexperienced eyes look each piercing and soothing on the similar time. Jaws drop, gasps escape, cameras shoot. Then, the animal vanishes as abruptly because it appeared. One is left guessing whether or not it was actual or an apparition. There’s nearly all the time silence within the aftermath of those tiger “emotion assaults.” I’ve misplaced rely of the variety of friends I’ve seen in tears after a tiger expertise. And let me inform you one other secret: Each single tiger sighting is like your first. It’s not an expertise that grows outdated or tires you. It’s addictive. It’s meditative. It’s life altering. You might be all the time left wanting for extra.

Chills, anybody? Go to our Good Nature Journey weblog once more quickly to learn extra insights from Aditya Panda on nationwide parks in India and what vacationers like you are able to do to assist guarantee wild scenes like it will endure.

Grand India wildlife safari