In Search of Jim Corbett
I’m tracking a tiger, a large male by the looks of it. You can tell by the breadth and shape of its footprints or ‘pugmarks’; even to my untrained eye the trail is clearly visible in the soft sand by the riverbed. Our guide speaks to us in hushed tones. The anticipation is palpable. We are within sniffing distance for sure.
But all of a sudden the tracks veer off into the undergrowth where the jeep cannot follow. There’ll be no sightings today, it seems. There’s still time yet, though: it’s just seven am and with the veil of mist lifting from the forest around us its inhabitants are slowly beginning to stir.
This is tiger country. India’s recently-formed Uttaranchal province borders Nepal to its east and Tibet to the north, and the part of it we’re in was made legendary by one man, his guns and most importantly, his notebook.
In 1944, Jim Corbett published his first book of jungle stories, Maneaters of Kumaon, a collection of real-life adventures charting his exploits in these parts exterminating rogue tigers. Little known these days outside India, the great white hunter enjoys a mystical reputation here and his books are still in print sixty years on.
Yet despite this ferocious aura, Corbett was a surprisingly modern figure. Something of an evangelist, he pioneered the ideas of conservation at a time when shooting wildlife with a camera rather than a rifle was thought of as quite preposterous.
Not only this, but Corbett was a rare embodiment of the positive side of colonialism. Born and raised in India, he spoke Hindi and several local dialects like a native. He knew the people and environment of the Kumaon region that now constitutes the east of Uttaranchal with an intimacy that few could equal. One has only to dip inside his works to confirm this assimilation; take for example the dedication of My India:
In my India, the India I know, there are four hundred million people, ninety percent of whom are simple, honest, brave, loyal, hard-working souls… It is of these people, who are admittedly poor, and who are often described as ‘India’s starving millions’, among whom I have lived and whom I love, that I shall endeavour to tell in the pages of this book, which I humbly dedicate to my friends, the poor of India.
Though after India’s independence and partition he moved to Kenya, where his last days were spent at the celebrated Treetops resort, Corbett was a true soul of the Indian jungle. He set foot in England not once in his lifetime.
His most enduring legacy is the place that bears his name, Corbett Park, India’s first national park and nature reserve and home to over three hundred tigers and countless other animals. Close enough to Delhi to drive to in a day, or arrive at from an overnight train, it is a popular weekend destination for those seeking to escape the dirt and dust of the city and hoping to sight that rarest of things, the tiger in his natural habitat.
The 1000 sq km park is divided into three main areas: an outer ‘buffer zone’ in which limited numbers of local people continue to live and work, the main park itself and an inner core to which access is restricted only to scientists and park officials.
But you are in tiger country within minutes of passing through the main gate. “A tiger was seen here only yesterday morning,” our guide informs us as we pass a local village in the buffer zone. “They are used to it.” Fortunately our hotel is another twenty minutes drive away, but still. A tiger? This close?
Though there’s no guarantee at all of encountering the big cats themselves, few visitors to Corbett leave entirely disappointed. Around Bajrani, one of the camps at which tours are based, on our first afternoon in the space of a half an hour we see: grey langur monkeys, nonchalantly conducting their business slap-bang in the middle of the dirt track; skittish chital, spotted deer, one of the tiger’s main sources of food; a larger sambhur deer, which elegantly regards us for a moment, before returning to its browsing; and birds aplenty, from iridescent blue kingfishers to storks, kites and other wildfowl.
Not fancying our chances of meeting a tiger from the chassis of a Gypsy landrover, at Bajrani we opt for an elephant tour. Slower and smellier for sure, nevertheless the elephant can lumber deep into the jungle itself and affords greater opportunities for tiger spotting from the precarious perch on its back.
From time to time the elephant emits a nervous rumble, and the mahout who drives her points out evidence of the tiger; not only pugmarks but sometimes the deep pattern of scratches left on the bark of a tree to indicate the limits of the big cat’s domain. We must be close; very close.
No. Still, nothing. The excitement is wearing and soon fades to disappointment, but after all we are here to see the tiger wild, as tigers should be, and that means they don’t always appear on cue.
Boarding the jeep again for the return to our hotel, however, there is a last surprise. Just visible beyond the swiftly descending mist, a small group of wild elephant – two of them tuskers. “You are very lucky to see them,” our guide informs us. “Very rare to see them at this time of year.”
But we came to see tiger, and even the joy of seeing the elephants is scant compensation. Still, there’s always tomorrow.
