Jim Corbett National Park and Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary Are Best Explored On Foot

Chandrahas Choudhury explores Jim Corbett National Park and Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary leisurely, by foot, both losing and finding himself in the wide, green expanse.

- Chandrahas Choudhury

Dawn in the Terai forest, on the edge of Jim Corbett National Park in Uttarakhand. Sleep still pressing down on the eyelids; legs creaking and slow. Looming in the low light are giant eucalyptus trees, long peelings from their papery barks strewn on the forest floor. The sense of a dream enhanced by the kitchengarden feel of copious shrubs of karipatta everywhere. and the eerie, echoing cries of peacocks. Now a dry riverbed, the ground underfoot giving way to a landscape of rounded stones polished into smoothness by flowing water. Across the river, another long expanse of eucalyptus trees and karipatta shrubs. And then another river bed, this one more sand than stone, flecked with leaves baked red by the summer sun.

Suddenly, the figure in front of me, a grizzled forest guide named Balam Singh, stops and points to a small trail of pugmarks in the terrain. As he turns, a look of sublime, almost drooling ecstasy lights up his face.

“The tiger was here… a few minutes before us,” he whispers. “Look, that’s where he climbed out of the river. The wind is blowing from behind us. So he has known for some time that we are coming after him. He’s running away from us. Let’s go after him!”

I felt my hair stand on end. True, I had come to Kumaon to walk—walk away all the accumulated weight and stress, the physical and digital grime of an entire year. I had seen tigers in the jungle on several occasions, mostly from a jeep and once from atop an elephant. But it was the combination of walking and tigers in the open forest that I wasn’t so sure about.