Spotting stripes in Mowgli's jungle

In the little-known forests that inspired The Jungle Book, Brian Jackman of The Sunday Times hunts Shere Khan

Even before I set foot in India, I knew what I most wanted to see. Not the Taj Mahal. Not the erotic temple carvings of Khajuraho, Delhi’s Red Fort, or even the dreamy lake palaces of Udaipur. Maybe it was Kipling’s Jungle Book that sowed the first seed. Or Jim Corbett’s classic tales of the Man-eaters of Kumaon. balesBut for as long as I can remember, I had wanted to see a wild tiger.

Corbett’s adventures were played out in Uttar Pradesh, in the foothills of the Himalayas. But I was heading for Kipling country, to the state of Madhya Pradesh, the wild heart of Mother India, whose tiger reserves offer visitors the best guarantee of meeting the elusive lord of the jungle. This is where I saw my first tiger, in Kanha, India’s finest national park. That was in 1988, and India has changed since then. Tourism has boomed and parks such as Kanha and Ranthambore are now filled to bursting with convoys of visitors.

What had drawn me back this time was one of the country’s newest tiger reserves, a little-known national park called Pench, where, I was told, I might still find the land of the tiger as it was in Kipling’s day.

Getting there is easy, which is good news for anyone familiar with the near-death experience of Indian road journeys. A direct flight from Delhi to Nagpur and no more than two hours of white-knuckle driving makes this just about the most accessible of all India’s tiger reserves.

But the best reason for going is that tourism in Pench is still a novelty. The park has been open to visitors for less than two years. As yet, there are few places to stay, and Bagh Van Lodge — by far the best — opened only last October. Consequently, except at weekends, when a few locals drive up from Nagpur, you can pretty much have the whole of Pench to yourself.

Bagh Van Lodge — a dozen small cottages and a communal dining room with a veranda — overlooks a dried-up watercourse along which leopards, sloth bears and even tigers sometimes pass by at night. The park is only five minutes away down a dusty track and the wildlife here is truly wild. “Our tigers are not like those domestic tigers you might find at Kanha or Ranthambore,” says Suniti Bushan Datta, Bagh Van’s inspirational resident naturalist. “Here you ’ll see the real thing.”

DURING MY stay I was fortunate to meet Hashim Tyabji, one of India’s most respected tiger experts, and for the next four days he became my guide as we scoured the park in his open 4WD. Ever since he went to work at Tiger Tops Jungle Lodge in Nepal 26 years ago, tigers had been his greatest passion.

On our way to the park, rugged up against the early morning chill, we drive through paddy fields in which local villagers have sat up all night in their flimsy machaans, or watchtowers, protecting their crops from marauding families of wild boar.

“Welcome to Mowgli’s Land,” says the hand-painted sign at the park entrance. For Pench was the home of Mowgli the wolf boy, Kipling’s Jungle Book hero, and the Seoni pack that adopted him. Although there is no record of Kipling ever exploring the jungle, he undoubtedly absorbed all the local tales that inspired him. Today, the offspring of the Seoni wolves still hunt across these rolling hills, along with the descendants of Shere Khan the Tiger.

Inside the park, the fields give way to jungle. But don’t expect to find the luxuriant, liana-tangled rainforest of pulp-fiction mythology. “In India, the word jungli simply means wilderness,” says Hashim. And it’s true. Pench looks more like Epping Forest than the scene of a Tarzan epic.

On both sides of the track, the tall trees close in: kapok and tamarind, frankincense, flame of the forest and endless aisles of teak. Most of the time you can look deep enough into the forest to see any tiger lying within a hundred yards of the path.

There are an estimated 51 tigers in Pench. Even so, in a park the size of Bedfordshire there are still a million places where they can hide, making every game drive a lucky dip, with the tiger as the main prize.

By day, its dappled woodlands are as benign as an English country park. Orioles call with fluting voices. Chital — the gentle spotted deer of India — drift among the trees, their velvet antlers back-lit by the sun. Peacocks strut and spread their tails, as in a 17th-century Mogul painting. But do not be lulled by this air of tranquillity. All is illusion, an Indian rope trick of the senses. You can never escape the tension that comes with being in tiger country. “Today you may not have seen the tiger,” says Hashim. “But the tiger has seen you.”

GAME-VIEWING in India is not like it is in Africa. On the African savanna, lions sell themselves cheaply. Sometimes you may come across two dozen at a time — sprawled belly-up in the shade of an acacia. But in India you must work hard to pin down your tiger. Shere Khan is a mainly solitary animal, and to find him you must scour every dusty track for the telltale imprint of his fresh pugmarks. You must become the thing you hunt. Listen for the jungle sounds — the alarm cries of deer, monkeys, peafowl. Use your vision with the intensity of a spotlight, sweeping among the trees, probing every rocky ledge and crevice where a big cat might hide. Only then, if you are lucky, will the tiger show itself to you.

Early next morning, we try again. We cross a wild meadow where chital — the tiger’s favourite takeaway — are browsing. Further along we pass a conclave of grey langur monkeys, the old men of the woods, with wizened black faces and muttonchop whiskers. The Seoni wolf pack proves as elusive as the tiger; but at least we are treated to the sight of 12 dhole, the wild red dogs of India, loping through the forest. For an hour we watch them playing king-of-the-castle on a pile of rocks, until, tiring of their sport, they cross the dried-up bed of the Pench River and vanish into the trees.

We spot shaggy brown sambar stags with hat-rack antlers. We see the ungainly nilgai, which looks more like a horse but is actually India’s biggest antelope, and we see a herd of gaur, the world’s largest wild oxen, led by a magnificent black-as-midnight bull. But still no tiger.

By now it is three hours since dawn and the sun is hot. Time to peel off our sweaters and stop for a bush breakfast in the shade of a tamarind. Nearby is the spot where the park’s five riding elephants are stabled.

Every morning, long before dawn, the elephants and their mahouts march out on tiger patrol. Whenever a tiger is located, the news is relayed to the park gates and visitors are directed to the spot, to be ushered on elephant-back into the big cat’s presence. Now, just as we are cracking into our first boiled eggs, word comes through that a tiger has been found. Breakfast is off — we hurry back into the forest.

The elephants are waiting by the roadside, and as soon as I am perched side-saddle in the padded howdah on my elephant’s broad back, we are off. Almost as suddenly, there is the tiger: 250kg of molten copper reclining on a throne of leaves. “What a beauty,” whispers Hashim. “It’s the Bodha Nullah Tiger. A male. Six years old and in his prime.”

Even in repose, the sight of him cannot fail to make you gasp. He is so big; so unbelievably orange. Unlike most cats, tigers’ eyes have round pupils, which gives them a particularly penetrating stare, as if they are looking deep into your soul. You note the huge forepaws, the great shaggy head with its broad muzzle and white whiskers, and know instinctively that you are in the presence of the ultimate carnivore.

From where he lies, barely a couple of yards beneath my dangling legs, he opens his jaws in a cavernous yawn, then rises slowly to his feet and slinks off through the trees. Twice he treats us to a growl — not the full-on, earth-shaking aaounnh of a tiger announcing his territorial imperative, but impressive nonetheless. We follow him a while, weaving and swaying in his wake as he covers the ground like a flame in the grass; but when at last he stops again and stretches out full-length in the shade, we leave him to his morning siesta. Mission accomplished.