It is our last resort. “If we haven’t seen anything we drive down this road as a final chance,” safari guide Venki says with finality. 

Up until now, we haven’t seen much.

We don’t have long, as the national park is due to close shortly. National parks are not open to traffic, even safari traffic, overnight for the protection of nocturnal hunters. 

And make no mistake, we are talking about tigers and leopards. This is their country. 

It is a bladder-busting journey down red dirt tracks pocked with monsoon potholes. But Venki was correct in his hunch. By some instinct – let’s not say luck  – three Asian elephants appear in the dusky light munching on bamboo.

I am in Nagarhole National Park, where spotted leopards outnumber the horizontal lines of the tiger. With around 90 leopards in this park and 70 tigers spread over more than 640 square kilometres, the statistics favour a big cat sighting. 

Let’s face it, the enigmatic cats are what we are all here to see. 

Never mind, there’s still tomorrow.

The safari truck revs up to make the 6:30pm gate closing time and we arrive just as the gates are being drawn. The timing is perfect for a pastel sunset of purple and pink, made all the more striking against the earthy neutrals of India.

Wood smoke stings the eye as we drive through villages preparing dinner. A local woman walks by the road with two toddlers either side and two plastic basins of food in each hand. While not entirely encroaching, this village certainly borders on tiger territory. 

The thing is, India is more often than not a human safari. The people are endlessly fascinating, playing out private activities like washing, cooking and eating out in the open. Even in the most remote reaches, close to the national parks and after driving nigh on five hours through roads so decrepit they’re inhospitable to most vehicles, there are still communities one hundred or more strong.

On many occasions, you think you’re alone and then local pickers appear from cotton fields or you’ll stumble upon women washing saris under a river bridge. 

The wildlife is somewhat overshadowed by India’s 1.25 billion strong population. And yet, it’s making a comeback. The latest figures reveal that India’s tiger population has increased from its lowest ebb in 2006 of 1411 to approximately 2226 in 2014. That represents an increase of 30% over four years since 2010’s figures.

More than 100 years ago, tigers roamed the forests in the hundreds of thousands.

The national parks of India are a product of English colonialism, originally established for purposes entirely different to those of today. Initially, these reserves were hunting grounds. They then transitioned to protected national parks. 

There are 166 national parks in India, with more than 30 serving as tiger protectorates. 

The conservation measures India has undertaken include anti-poaching policing and habitat protection. The reduction in species numbers triggered the government to take action with a tiger task force. Encouragingly, unlike pandas for instance, tigers are good breeders.

Almost 75% of the world’s 3200 tigers are found in India, so the conservation efforts are crucial to the survival of the species. 

The jungle scenery is magnificent in the morning after the monsoon. Lurid green foliage on teak trees cradle resting serpent eagles. Moss leeches off bark, a testament to the months of damp monsoon. Macaques with black faces have tails that dangle at a length of three times their body. A Malabar giant squirrel, only found in South India, scurries along tree branches just below the canopy. 

Guide Venki says that it is officially the first day of winter and he can feel it in the chill air we are cloaked up to resist. 

Nature is flourishing, from the floral blossoms, to the grass and the leaves. 

But the exemplification of abundance are the tens of thousands of cobwebs we trip over that carpet every grass blade and tree branch for around one hundred metres. 

Then there are the dragonflies, which make a Herculean insect migration over the sea on monsoonal winds to India. 

Suddenly, there’s a spotted deer with an erect tail. This is a good thing for us observers but possibly a bad thing for the deer. 

Danger is afoot. Hopefully danger dressed up as four paws and orange fur. 

I hold my breath as the deer delicately hot-hoofs it through the clearing to take cover in bush. 

After five minutes of 360-degree ogling, we drive on. No tiger to see here. 

But suddenly, there is the swagger of what looks like a dog-fox hybrid. 

These are India’s wild dogs and they look healthy and handsome. They hunt in packs and manage to kill from one out of five hunts, compared to the tiger which rates at one in 20.

The deer may not have led us to a tiger but on the drive home they alert us to another creature, albeit not so fearsome. Look closely and notice that the deer are not eating the roadside grass, but rather the discarded falling leaves from munching monkeys overhead. 

This symbiotic relationship is found throughout the jungle. The impression that remains long after departing the national parks of India can be conveyed in one word: dappled. 

Much like the tiger’s spots, the light filters through the canopy to create pockets of glow among green undergrowth. Diffused sunrays are like a spotlight on the long grass that camouflages everything that the imagination could place there. 

“We have a video of a tiger who sees the jeep and then slowly backs into the bushes,” guide Venki says, slightly apologetically.

While the countryside is lush and abundant, it makes big cat sightings all the more shrouded and difficult.

 A little about the logistics of safari, while we wait to spot the big cat. 

In India, unlike Africa, you do not get to choose a private vehicle. The safaris are not run by the lodges but by the State Forest Department and are based on numbers. I lucked out on day one and shared one guide and a six-seater jeep with just one couple. The next day, it was a rickety old bus with another 15 guests. 

If you’re lucky, you will see rhinos, wild dogs, bears, elephants, tigers and leopards. 

Unfortunately the Asian rhino has not enjoyed the same comeback as the tiger, and remains the most endangered mammal in Asia.

Monsoon season is between June and October, so do not even attempt a safari then or risk a very soggy drive and rather recalcitrant wildlife. I visited at the end of October, post-monsoon.

It was a time when the jungle was beginning to stir. 

However, the recommendation for the best safari time is pre-monsoon, from February to May, when the dry season forces the more elusive wildlife (here’s looking at you, tiger) to drink and cool down in waterholes. And, as pretty as the greenery was in October, pre-summer the lack of foliage means more regular sightings. 

The next day – the one day I am not scheduled to don khaki and binoculars – is the day that guests return to breakfast buzzing. 

They’ve seen a tiger. 

I chug back my coffee and reflect that safari is not without its frustrations. Wild animals will not work to your schedule, and in a world accustomed to instant gratification that is quite the affront.

At breakfast, a woman who saw the tiger asks me what I have seen during my stay. I reel off my list of conquests: wild dogs, giant squirrels, deer, elephants. 

“Oh! We would have given anything to see wild dogs. Not this time,” she says, deflated.

See the dog, miss the cat. See the cat, miss the dog.

I suppose you’re either a cat or a dog person. 

In this instance the two species have stayed true to their reputation by well and truly keeping their distance. 

The paw print may have been in mud, but now it’s smudged into my mind.