Wildlife & Safari

Sightings are luck; positioning is not. Madhya Pradesh releases core-zone permits 120 days ahead and they go in minutes, so we buy on the opening morning — Tala for Bandhavgarh, Mukki for Kanha’s barasingha, and Satpura, where you can walk and paddle rather than sit in a queue of jeeps. Further east, Kaziranga’s Central Range holds rhino at a density found nowhere else. South, Kabini’s black panther. In Ladakh, February and March put snow leopard on the Ulley ridgelines with a spotter’s scope. Sri Lanka adds Wilpattu’s leopard, Bhutan the black-necked cranes at Phobjikha. We name your naturalist in writing before you book, and keep the same one throughout.