India is the country with highest tiger population in the world. Similarly Madhya Pradesh is the state, in India, with highest tiger population, in compare to any other state of this country. Thus we can say that Madhya Pradesh is the tiger capital of the world. It means it is the state where we can expect best tiger safari experience in the world. If we go through the tiger safari destinations map, in the world, we will find that majority of popular tiger reserves are located in the Madhya Pradesh state of India. When we use the word "Tiger Safari" we means jungle safari drives, dedicated for tiger tracking as supreme objective and on getting the success, enjoy the sighting, capture the moments in your camera to check your wildlife photography skills and later share with others. Destinations like Kanha tiger reserve, Bandhavgarh tiger reserve, Pench tiger reserve, Panna tiger reserve, Satpura tiger reserve are undoubtedly the best tiger safari destinations in the world. They are so much closely linked with each other that we can cover them all without using any flight or train journey, just by a car drive.
For wildlife tours, we can undertake trip at any season. Earlier we have constraint that national parks remain closed on monsoon but now a days, buffer safari zones of all popular tiger reserves remains open for tourists. Now when we talk about best time for tiger safari tours, we can choose that period of the season when climatic conditions are favorable and probability of sighting will be high. As per our past experience, we can say that post winter period (February to May) offers good time for undertaking such tours. It is a popular fact, known to most of the big cat lovers thus here we need to plan in advance to secure your safari permits and leave rest of our luck. For this we need to finalize our plan in Oct-Nov months so that we can timely do advance permits bookings for popular safari zones and thus enhance success of our upcoming trip. One of the most prominent reason behind failure of tiger safari tours is the delay in tour confirmation from guest side and poorly updated travel agent. When guest delays the decision, smart wildlife photographers book the safari permits in advance and popular zone permits get sold out due to which, despite of all efforts like good guide, good safari driver, tiger sighting probability diminishes. Similarly without proper update on safari trend like which safari zone is more happening, which national park is most happening, on the basis of old information, some remote agencies do permits booking in a random way due to which dispite of timely tour confirmation, outcome of trip comes negative. Thus we always keeps note of safari updates from different tiger reserves, consult our local safari guide team before safari permits booking. This we can do when our guests gives timely confirmation to us.
At Madhya Pradesh, we can find some popular tiger safari destinations. Here we have tried to prepare list of popular tiger reserves in Madhya Pradesh state which can be visited for tiger photography and videography. At present, these are the best forests to undertake safaris in search of wild tigers.
| Tiger Safari Destinations | |||
| Pench National Park | Kanha National Park | Bandhavgarh | Panna National Park |
| Sanjay Dubri National Park | Satpura National Park | - | - |
Despite of knowing the prominent tiger reserves, we can't be assured of good tiger safari experience. Many times when 15-20 safari vehicles, visit the same safari zone at same time and same day, only few of them succeed to see the tiger where as others miss the chance, sometimes by seconds and many times by minutes. Although tiger sighting is a matter of luck but still by observing some precautions, we can enhance the sighting probability. So what are the different ways, adopted by famous tiger photographers to enhance their safari experience, let check them one by one.
| Points | Description |
| Collect Updates | It is the first and most basic step in which we collect current sighting upadtes from different tiger reserves and try to predict the tiger safari possibility in next 4-5 months. Check where tigress is present with cubs and they start coming out. This step will help us to shortlist the national parks to visit. |
| Decide travel period | In this strep we choose the safari period like in which month, we should travel and put our focus on which safari zones. Some of the national parks are very bood in summers but are average in winters whereas some national parks gives consistently good results in winters and summers and some of the national parks remains average in all seasons.if |
| Timely confirmation | Do the tour confirmation in advance so that we can do the safari permits booking on the first day when they are available for booking. If we delay our decision, most probably we will not get the good safari zones and thus sighting probability will reduce. Thus it is in hand of photographer to provide timely confirmation and enable us to act on time. |
| Safari Team | Once good safari zones are booked, now its time to make a right combination of safari team. This team is of safari guide and safari driver. Their mutual understanding, anticipation skills, past experience, quick decision making will collectively put impact on safari results. Here good guide decides where to search, how long to wait, when to leave the spot. Accordingly driver will have to follow the instructions. Here safari driver decides when to move fast, when need to be slow, when sighting is going on how to position the vehicle for good shot. |
| Risk bearing capacity | Safari is all about guessing by safari driver and guide. As per past experience, behaviour of particular tiger or tigress, topography conditions, they take risk so wait at a point with expectation of some movement or leave the place and search other spots. Many times, such guess resulted into exclusive shots which turns memorable but at the same time sometime we will miss the chances also. During such moments, we have to maintain patience. |
9202337070