Tadoba Tiger Reserve

Tadoba Tiger Reserve is a fantastic off-the-beaten-track national park found in the Chandrapur district of Maharashtra in central India, two hours’ drive from Nagpur. Legend says that the tribal God ‘Tadu’ died here while fighting a tiger and the tribals erected a shrine to honour his memory under a large tree on the shores of Lake Tadoba, thus naming the jungle ‘Tadoba’.

Opened in 1955 as a national park, and expanded in 1995 into a tiger reserve, this rare jungle jewel has become one of India’s leading tiger reserves and it is proudly known as ‘the Land of the Tigers’. While tiger sightings are high (Tadoba is home to an estimated 72 tiger over 625 square km of jungle), the park also boasts a wealth of other wildlife such as leopards, sloth bears, hyenas, wild dogs, gaur, civet, jungle cats and samba, cheetal (spotted deer), nilgai and barking deer. There are also over 200 species of birds at Tadoba, including the crested serpent eagle, grey-headed fishing eagle, honey buzzard, the shy jungle fowl and the paradise flycatcher.

Dominated by teak forest and bamboo, this is a rugged landscape comprising cliffs, caves, marshes, perennial lakes and boulder strewn streambeds. It is teeming with indigenous flora and fauna, but unique to Tadoba, are the enormous ‘ghost trees’ with ghostly white bark. Scattered throughout Tadoba park you will find the lovely kusums and flowering silk cottons, which bloom from late winter to spring.

Accommodations around the park are simple and, apart from Svasara which opened in 2011, there are no luxurious options. Tadoba park would really suit those looking for a rounded wildlife experience, above and beyond a purely tiger dominated search. One for the purists. 

There are no foreign lands. It is the traveller only who is foreign.
Robert Louis Stevenson