Jules’ Trip to India

Ten years ago I first started to go to India, and ten years ago I visited Ranthambhore – so the epiphany was in fact a long time ago now. Sadly not the great awakening of the ‘wow’ factor on seeing Tigers here – but sadly quite the opposite; an experience that I was very uncomfortable with. I knew then instantly that the wildlife experience on offer here could be done better and with more thought for both Tigers and visitors.
Here was an irrational melee of vehicles and open trucks all in a mindless scramble of dust and diesel fumes that ensued on spotting a beautiful male Tiger; the ghastly picnic spot with the shambles of toilets and litter, the organised chaos at the start of the day at the gate with fighting between ticket touts; the lack of care and feeble interpretation from the guides assigned to us (or not if you were in a 20 seater truck!); the wholesale pursuit of tigers at the expense of the other glorious diversity of this stunning place.
I admit it – I have been spoilt from an early age in Africa to have enjoyed wilderness for wilderness sake, lived with the joy of seeing wild antelope on our farm, wary of leopards the rock ‘kopje’s’ we climbed as kids and had my uncle’s his hippo in the garden, so it was not a normal childhood, but it was always magical, often scary and of course life changing - so its transpired.
Furthermore I had spent four weeks in a Nepalese jungle called Bardia with my father-in-law, an inspirational figure himself, John Blashford-Snell, and we had had superb jungle experiences camped in his ‘JBS camp’ by the Karnali River, searching for Tigers and his famous ‘Mammoth’ elephants.
Now what I was being offered in Ranthambhore was a hideous ‘tourist’ trail, badly thought through and poorly supervised that was going to do nothing for wild tiger welfare, very little for much needed environmental education of visitors and inspire nobody to join the fight for the preservation of the wild landscapes found across India today.
In 2004 I therefore felt compelled to help and the only way I could see this working was through a campaign waged within my own Travel and Tourism community – with a global campaign to appeal to businesses within the Tiger tourism fraternity to get together and act, both through their own business practices but also through the ‘purchasing power’ of tourism, to encourage more sustainable enterprises and better services, that could move Tiger tourism from a real ‘threat’ to an active force for Tiger conservation.
So now five years on – with 150 worldwide members involved in the campaign Travel Operators for Tigers, a whole corporate social responsibility certification for lodges in place and increasing commitment from the Travel industry, government and conservationists to work together, I am finally setting out to prove that it may just be possible in India today. So despite its burgeoning human population, its collapsing forests, its highly endangered Tigers and withering biodiversity, I want look at a new way of preserving its diminishing habitat, that goes against everything that has been believed about managing wilderness in India up till today.
I am setting off on a ten week sabbatical from Discovery Initiatives, to look at and assess the forests left standing today, outside those already under governmental park protection (that’s still over 88% of India’s remaining forest cover) to see if we could return them to viable Tiger habitat, using ecotourism, carbon offset financing and private enterprise with the communities being actual shareholders in any such reserve.
I have (probably foolharedly) stated I believe it is possible, but tourism can make a difference.
I have seen it done in other parts of the world.
Now I am being asked to find just such a landscape to encourage the setting up of just such a viable reserve to achieve it.
Wish me luck – it’s a mighty challenge!
I will be keeping you updated on my journey, through India last remaining forest preserves, over the next weeks on this blog, or you can read my various articles and information on TOFT with my views and reasoning on www.toftigers.org