INTRODUCTION

India is wild, magnificent and diverse. Some

of the most beautiful and rare animals in
the world are to be found here. The high
Himalayas, fertile floodplains, evergreen
peninsular forests, shimmering wetlands, and
meandering coastline shape our wild trails.
Some 700 million years ago, what is now India
was actually two major landmasses, separated
by the primordial Tethys Sea. Of these vast
stretches of land, one was called Gondwana,
and around 150 million years ago tectonic
forces pushed the Gondwana mass towards
the northeast, forcing the oceanic bed of the
Tethys Sea to rise under its thrust.
The sea vanished and the raised land formed
the Tibetan plateau that reached a height
of 4,000 m. The upward thrust instigated
the rise of an undulating rugged mountain
range called the Himalayas. Today, Indias
congregation of flora and fauna can be
classified into certain biogeographic regions:
Trans-Himalaya, Himalaya, plains, desert,
semi-arid, Western Ghats, Deccan peninsula,
northeast, coasts and islands.
India is diversity rolled into one. Here lives the
king of animals - the Royal Bengal Tiger. We
have some of the fi nest tiger reserves spread
from the northern Terai region in Dudhwa
and Corbe!, to dense forests down south
in Bandipur, Nagarhole and Periyar, from
arid Ranthambhore to the mystic mangroves
of Sundarbans, from the rainforests of
Namdapha and grasslands of Kaziranga to the
bamboo dominated central Indian highlands
of Kanha and Bandhavgarh the tiger is
everywhere.

LEFT: A lone elephant walks along forest trails in

Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand