India

India is the best place on earth to look for wild tigers, and that is only where it starts.

No other country holds this range of wildlife. The Bengal tiger is the headline — India has the largest wild population anywhere — but the same country gives you the last wild Asiatic lions in Gir, one-horned rhino on the Brahmaputra floodplains, snow leopard in the Ladakh cold desert, and the only ape in the subcontinent in a patch of Assam forest. Four wild cats the size of a leopard or bigger live here.

The habitats are just as wide. In a few weeks you can go from Himalayan meadow to desert grassland, from Western Ghats rainforest to the world’s largest mangrove. Around 1,300 bird species have been recorded — close to an eighth of all the birds on the planet.

It works differently from an African safari, and it is worth knowing that up front. You drive fixed forest zones on permit-based jeep drives, the forest is denser, and a tiger is earned through patience rather than handed to you on an open plain. When it works, there is nothing like it — a wild tiger walking a forest track towards your vehicle is one of the great sights in nature.

We run India end to end with our own guides and vehicles, the same way we run Kenya and Tanzania. That is the difference between being routed through whoever is cheapest and having one team answer for your permits, your zones and your timing.