Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand
Jim Corbett has been hosting tigers since 1936, which makes it the oldest national park in India and the site where Project Tiger was formally launched in 1973. The Dhikala zone, set inside a broad riverine grassland called the chaur, gives you the kind of unobstructed sightlines that most Indian forests never offer. Tigers here hunt in the open. The park sits across roughly 520 square kilometres of sal forest, riverbed, and grassland in the Himalayan foothills, and the Ramganga reservoir running through it draws wildlife in the dry months between February and June. Elephant-back safaris are no longer permitted, but jeep access into Dhikala is among the most rewarding in the country. Corbett also carries leopards, elephants, and gharial, so a blank morning on tigers is rarely a blank morning.
