Tiger Trails

Located precisely at the centre of the country, Nagpur is often described as the 'Tiger Capital of India', connecting central India's numerous tiger conservation parks to the world but much more than this, the city is the showcase for many of central India’s urban and tribal Arts and crafts.  Here you will find examples of fascinating metal carvings, textile printing, carpet and Dari weaving to silverware and stone craft and intricate terracotta.

Today the city is also an emerging IT hub after Bengaluru, Mysore and Pune it was declared the best city to live in by United nations in 2019.

The Taboba-Andhari Tiger Reserve is one of the largest in central India and sufficiently off-the-beaten track to escape the attention of day tripers and week-end enthusiasts despite boasting one of the highest tiger numbers in the country. A region of deep valleys, meadows and wetlands, 87% of the reserve is covered in beautiful dry deciduous, making it ideal terrainf or a rage of wildlife. At the last census, over 75 tigers were identified within its borders, along with leopard, wild dog, striped hyena, gaur, nilgai, sambar, chital, civet cats, marsh crocodiles and nearly 200 species of birds.

Considered sacred by its indegenous people who beleive the goddess Taru inhabits and protects the densely forested hills.

With its miles of teak and bamboo forests, and open meadows of tall, bleached grass, the landscape of Pench National Park is straight off the pages of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. The reserve flanks the southern border of Madhya Pradesh and northern border of Maharashtra, encompassing a wild, uninhabited zone bisected by the Pench River.The tiger population is stable and sightings occur daily here – although not for everyone. Touring the park’s pot-holed roads in Jeeps, you’re more likely to come across packs of wild dogs and striped hyena, and herds of deer and antelope as well as the odd gaur (bison).

The craggy, forested peaks of the Satpura (or ‘Mahadeo’) mountains form a romantic backdrop for safaris in this remote park in southern Madhya Pradesh. Tiger sightings are not as frequent as at other parks in the region – this is somewhere people come more for a relaxed experience of unsullied wilderness. Satpura ranks among the few sanctuaries in India where you can undertake safaris on foot. Wardens and guides lead visitors on wonderful treks through the sal, teak and bamboo groves, and further afield to far-flung prehistoric rock-art sites in the depths of the forest.

Mumbai has been India’s busiest port and industrial centre since the opening of the Suez Canal in 1969. As famous today for its traffic jams as its record-breaking movie industry, the Maharashtrian capital tends not to feature high up most visitors’ ‘must see’ list, but as a point of arrival has a lot to recommend it.

Before the last British troops garrisoned in the country slow-marched past it to board their ships back to Blighty in 1947, the Gateway of India – a huge triumphal arch in the colonial Indo-Saracenic style – was the first landmark most new arrivals from Britain set eyes on. The second was the famous Taj Mahal Hotel beside it. Both still stand tall on the waterfront, as emblematic of the city today as they were in Victorian times.

Still more impressive monuments of the empire dominate the Kala Godha and Fort districts beyond the Gateway, among them Victoria Terminus, the world’s grandest railway station, and white-domed Prince of Wales Museum (both nowadays renamed after the 17th century Maharashtrian warlord, Shivaji). Nearby, the vast High Court and University buildings line the palm-fringed Maidans where cricketers in their whites play through the afternoons, as commuters stream home through Churchgate Station