Roam India’s forests long enough, and the wild clings to you like a second skin. What once startled—an animal’s shadow, a goat’s disappearance, lives shaped by elephant paths—starts feeling real. The unbelievable becomes routine. Survival isn’t heroic in such places, it is just habitual. And the quiet resilience of those living on the fringes of tiger reserves becomes not a story, but the land’s unvarnished truth.
That is why the story of a summer evening when forest guide at Sanjay Dubri National Park, in Madhya Pradesh, Lalji Bhai Gupta found himself climbing a 12-foot-tall tree on his way back home was intriguing, but not surprising. “It was the only day I feared for my life, having worked in the forest for years, growing up here as a child,” he said.
You see, he had come face to face with a family of tigers, all seven of them, while riding his motorbike. While rescue efforts took hours as he sat on the tree, he remembers the night as the only one that led to a fever in years. On the last day of the summer safari season in 2025, I faced a somewhat similar yet starkly different situation at Gothangaon gate, Umred-Karhandla-Paoni sanctuary (UPKWLS).
While a tigress slept in the bushes, stripes were strewn across, here, there and everywhere! It was difficult to determine how many until they all woke up and walked together like a train to the nearest waterhole. There were half a dozen! Of different faces, behaviour and with distinguishable personalities. One dozed off sitting while another checked out the safari vehicles up close; the other three waited for Mom to walk up to them before following her.
The above two stories are from India, but they are from two very different landscapes. Larger and established tiger reserves today have designated buffers expanding hundreds of kilometres unlike the smaller and newer parks, where both forest management and encroachment are not in balance. As International Tiger Day on 29th July completes 15 years in 2025, India is celebrating a growing and healthy population of the wild beauties, close to 4,000 of them. In the world, wild tigers inhabit only a small part of Siberia, and in Asian countries like Nepal, Bhutan, Thailand, Indonesia and China - other than our own.
There is not a safari goer who has not been told this at least once. But with changing habitats, genetics and food availability, tigers are slowly changing too. Or perhaps, behaviours earlier unknown to man are now being documented better. Tiger families essentially comprise a mother and her cubs, with occasional and rare visits from the father. Sridhar Sivaram, a financial advisor and award-winning wildlife photographer, captures his emotions of seeing such families, saying, “What I find most fascinating in the jungle is to see the interaction of cubs with the mother—the play fight of the cubs are a treat to watch.”
In India’s densely populated reserves, large tiger families have become seasonal stars—roaming, playing, and hunting together in full view. Gothangaon, a small part of Maharashtra’s Umred-Karhandla-Paoni sanctuary spread across 189 sq km, has drawn widespread attention this year for its “Gothangaon Express,” a tiger family named by photographers. In 2022, tigress T6, or Fairy, gave birth to five cubs who quickly rose to fame. Today, one of those cubs is raising her own litter of five. Similar sightings have emerged from Ranthambore, Jim Corbett, Kanha, Tadoba, and Pench, where safe habitats and expansive territories support such dynasties. But how or why is this happening?
Dr.K Ullhas Karanth, a leading scientist and author who has studied India’s tigers for many decades, said in an interview in 2023, “Even assuming a modest rise in population density to three tigers per 100 sq km across the country’s tiger habitats, we can easily reach 10,000 tigers.”
Experts suggest it is not a new phenomenon. Tigers are capable of having a big litter, but it all depends on the availability of food and the safety of their habitat. Tiger cubs part ways with their mother after spending 22-24 months in her care. But with unfamiliar males and younger adults coming into their mother’s territory, among several other natural causes, their mortality rate remains high in infancy.
A forest official at UPKWLS attributed the rising demand for safaris at the Gothangaon gate to the presence of the family, but she also pointed out that the tourists disappear as soon as the family separates, making the popularity seasonal at best. In larger parks, the successful dispersal of these cats drives tourism patterns across zones. But in smaller reserves dominated by just one or two tigers, such multi-generational sightings are fleeting—appearing only briefly, once every few years. When tourists flock to see them out of virality, the guides and drivers of such parks feel overwhelmed with expectation. They are forced to vie for a spot among scores of vehicles to satisfy the guests. But when they don’t return, it creates a cycle of despair for those dependent on tourism.
Dr. Karanth also said, “India still has 380,000 sq km of potential tiger habitat but less than 20 per cent of this area is protected adequately to support tigers in reasonable densities. Only a few well-managed reserves have attained densities of 5-10 tigers per 100 sq km.” This often translates to overtourism in popular places, often with chances of sighting multiple tigers together.
Speaking about this, Sivaram raised an excellent point. “We have to give space to the animals, and watch them from a distance, and I support the mobile ban in Maharashtra’s parks, which indirectly ensures that the driver and guides do not take the vehicle too close to the animal.”
Remember Lalji Bhai Gupta? In 2022, the same year T6 was raising her five, an extraordinary situation developed at Sanjay Dubri National Park, at Madhya Pradesh’s far end, 50 km from Rewa. T28, a dominant tigress, had just birthed three cubs when her sister, who had a similar-aged litter nearby, died in a road accident. During a patrol, T28 found the orphaned cubs and, defying instinct and research, took them back to her den. Instead of harming them, she raised all six cubs—her own and her sister’s—earning the name Mausi-Maa (aunt turned mother). The story drew a wave of tourists and photographers, though the frenzy was short-lived, and the park now sees a trickle of safari goers, slightly higher on the weekends, although the adult tigers continue to live there and appear frequently.
Tigers are thriving, as they have for thousands of years, with the exception of increased threats to their existence now. And yet, viral videos often determine the popularity of a park or a particular zone in today’s complex digital world. The ones who don’t reside in tourist areas may raise large litters every year, but the ones who do often move away from areas that attract too many visitors every day, to have their next litter. Exceptions remain, and they offer delightful encounters like the one I had on the last day of summer safari season, keeping me hooked to see their growth once the parks open again in October.
