From The Latest Issue: Beyond The Tiger And Into India’s Wild

MK Ranjitsinh Jhala, the former IAS officer who drafted India’s Wildlife Protection Act, has a name for what ails Indian wildlife tourism: “Mega Mammal Myopia.” It’s the tendency of safari-goers to fixate on the tiger while ignoring everything else in the forest around it. “People go to safaris to merely ogle at a tiger. What about the deer? What about the birds? What about the big cats’ prey?” he said.

Thankfully, recent reports suggest the gaze may finally be shifting away from the tiger. Travellers are now willing to move off the jeep track and onto foot or by boat, chasing something slower and less certain than a tiger sighting, and gradually, they are finding it.

Wildlife bookings on EaseMyTrip have climbed in double digits every year, with Kaziranga now pulling in four times the visitors it did a decade ago and searches for leopards, birdwatching, and marine-wildlife experiences growing faster than conventional tiger safaris, said co-founder and CEO Rikant Pittie.

Hansa Research values India’s safari tourism market at USD 2.8 billion this year, projected to reach USD 5.3 billion by 2035, with domestic travellers already accounting for 60 per cent of demand. Executive vice president Piyali Chatterjee Konar said the demand is increasingly driven by Millennials and Gen Z seeking “authentic, sustainable, and experience-led holidays” rather than a single marquee sighting, a shift visible in the sharp rise of eco-lodges built around protected areas rather than at their gates.

Nowhere does this recalibration of expectations matter more than the Sundarbans, where a tiger sighting is, by most operators’ own admission, closer to luck than plan. Debabrata Mondal, who manages Jhore Jole Jongole in the Sundarbans, has learnt to prepare guests for this before the boat even leaves the jetty. He recalled one visitor who came purely for tiger photographs and left without a single tiger frame, but thrilled all the same, showing off pictures of an estuarine crocodile and a kingfisher instead.

The tiger, in other words, hasn’t lost its pull. It has just stopped being the only reason to go.

Speaking Of Sighting

Wildlife conservation photographer Balan Madhavan has spent nearly four decades roaming the Western Ghats as “a nature photographer, not just a wildlife photographer.” In Periyar, Madhavan still walks the way he did as a young photographer, guided rather than alone. It was a local forest watcher, Thaadi Kannan, who reframed the whole exercise for him decades ago, asking simply, “The forests have given you so much, what have you given them back?” The question turned a man chasing frames into a conservationist. His most recognised image, a Nilgiri Tahr framed in the doorway of an abandoned building in Eravikulam, came out of exactly this kind of unhurried walking, the sort no jeep could have produced.

Somewhere between the mountains and the sea, this patience turns into a kind of listening. Tour operator Chanak Doshi of Simply Offbeat Holidays said the best naturalists can name a bird by its call before it comes into view, and know a wetland’s breeding calendar well enough to steer a group clear of it rather than through it. At Mangalajodi in Odisha, that discipline turns up the Spoon-billed Sandpiper and the Dalmatian Pelican; at Eaglenest in Arunachal, it turns up the Bugun Liocichla and Blyth’s Tragopan, birds rare enough that people cross continents for them. The same widening curiosity, tour operators say, is now pulling families and young travellers who once skipped wildlife holidays entirely into itineraries built around learning rather than ticking off a single animal.

Photographer Shiladitya Chaudhury has built his entire practice on that same premise. “In the wild, every single creature matters,” he commented. “An insect, a bird, and even a reptile.” He described standing on an Odisha beach during the annual mass nesting of olive ridley turtles, a spectacle that lasts only four days a year. “You can't see any sand on the beach, which stretches more than one and a half to two kilometres,” he said. “It’s just turtles, turtles, and turtles.”

Underwater, the same gaze plays out in silence. Off Neil Island in the Andamans, Scuba Yogi founder Gaurav Sharma has watched two dugongs “playing with each other like human babies, trying to pull each other’s legs,” and once guided a hundred-plus-dive veteran to her first hawksbill turtle, a sighting that sent her to the surface in tears; she stayed on for eight more dives before she could bring herself to leave. Some of the turtles at nearby Dixon’s Pinnacles, fellow instructor Mia Raghavi of PADI said, have grown so used to divers that they nap inside barrel sponges without a glance upwards, indifferent to the bubbles. Further out in Lakshadweep, Rizal Ma, staff instructor at Ammathi Scuba, has noticed the divers he trains asking fewer questions about what they will see and more about how the reef itself holds together. “It becomes an experience of understanding, appreciating, and respecting the underwater world, rather than just sightseeing,” he said.

The Rewards of Patience

In Ladakh, snow leopards do not patrol fixed territory or gather at waterholes the way tigers do; they are found by people who have spent lifetimes reading disturbance in scree and snow. Morup Namgail, a photographer who runs a family lodge called Shan at Uley, has spent winters doing exactly this, radio in hand, waiting on a ridge for a spotter’s call. One morning brought a scene he still struggles to describe: his father spotted movement through binoculars and realised a pack of five wolves was trying to drive a snow leopard off its own kill. “It’s an extremely rare moment where you could see both of them together in a face-off situation,” Namgail said. A harder memory has stayed with him longer, of a mother snow leopard who died mid-kill, her cub left feeding beside both predator and prey.

Down in Leh, David Sonam has built an entire homestay, SnowView Hideaway, around this same rhythm of watching and waiting, deliberately capped at 11 rooms. His spotters, mostly local farmers, spend the winter scanning the slopes; guests who see nothing one day simply walk instead, past blue sheep and Ladakhi urial, a wild sheep found almost nowhere else on Earth. “We keep a very low footfall,” he said. “We don’t want to make it big.”

In Madhya Pradesh, the animal most travellers looked away from is now drawing them in on foot. A walking safari called The Last Vulture takes visitors through the ravines and waterfalls of Rewa, home to seven of India’s nine vulture species, with no jeep and no big cat anywhere on the itinerary. The deliberately slow pace lets people notice how forest, bird, and village are stitched together, and it has changed how even the operators see the birds they grew up dismissing. Locals described a flock stripping a carcass clean in 20–30 minutes and calling the vultures friends, not omens. “To them, vultures were the cleaners that charged no fee,” the operator said, “and took care of the dead and decaying carcasses.” Visitors who arrive sceptical of a scavenging bird tend to leave asking how they can help it survive.

Put these journeys side by side, and a pattern emerges. Nobody among them set out chasing a tiger, and stumbled onto something better by accident. The wolves fighting a leopard over its kill, the beach vanishing under turtles, the vulture nobody in the city could name, none of it was on anyone’s checklist to begin with. What kept people there, walking more slowly and staying longer than planned, was something close to what Jhala had meant all along: the tiger was never the whole forest, only its loudest resident. So, the next time you walk into a forest, hike in a valley, or swim near a reef, let the guide lead, and never bait a creature for a shot, because the moment you do, you already stopped respecting the wildlife you came looking for.

Who To Book With

Shan at Uley

Family-run Ladakh lodge where local spotters lead snow leopard treks, and evenings mean butter tea, chang, and Ladakhi village life at 13,200 feet. shanatuley.com

Simply Offbeat Holidays

Small-group birding trails to Mangalajodi, Odisha and Eaglenest, Arunachal Pradesh. simplyoffbeat.com

Jhore Jole Jongole

Mangrove boat safaris are built around the ecosystem in Jharkhali, Sunderbans. jhorejolejongole.com

PADI Dive Centres

(Scuba Yogi, Neil Island; Ammathi Scuba, Agatti)

Certified small-batch dives known for dugong, turtle, and reef sightings. padi.com

The Last Vulture

A walking safari built entirely around vultures, in Rewa, Madhya Pradesh. IG: @the_lastvulture

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