At the very end of his book, whose title I have shamelessly plagiarized, Bill Bryson wrote of his hike on the daunting Appalachian Trail “I won’t say that the experience changed our lives… but I certainly gained an appreciation and respect for the woods and wilderness…”.  Half a world away and filled with beasties that would have made even a hardcore travel writer such as Bryson huddle deeper in his sleeping bag, the forested hills of the Corbett Park buffer zone offer a walking experience that instills the same huge respect for the Indian wilderness.

Where the Gangetic plain gives way to the very first of the Himalayan foothills, the Shivaliks, lie over 1300 square kilometres of pristine wilderness which in 1936 became known as Corbett National Park. The park was named after Jim Corbett, the legendary hunter-turned-conservationist who tracked and killed numerous “man-eating” tigers and leopards in the early twentieth century, when there were still enough cats around to cause frequent problems with the resident population. Today the park is a vital refuge for tigers whose numbers have dwindled alarmingly in recent years. The park’s terrain and thick vegetation cover afford the cats more protection than most sanctuaries, and some say their numbers are increasing here.

While the most common way of trying to spot tigers as well as the numerous other denizens of the Corbett forests is to take a jeep safari into the park, by far the best way to really come face to face with this habitat is to put on a pair of good hiking boots and head into the buffer zone of the park - on foot. As there are no fences around the park, the buffer zone around it is as likely a place as any to run into animals, so this activity is strictly illegal, but let’s keep that detail between us.

Anyone who has walked in the African “bush” appreciates the importance of a pre-walk briefing during which your guide will tell you what to do when you round the bend and come face to face with a rhino, or worse, a herd of Cape buffalo – basically, keep still and get behind the gun!

However when one tries to brief people that are going to enter the Indian forests about dangers that are equally real, their eyes glaze over as to say “What’s the worst a spotted deer can do!” This blasé attitude typically lasts for a maximum of a few minutes into any given walk – until they see the irrefutable evidence that humans are way down on the food chain – a pugmark.  

There is something in a fresh tiger pugmark that bypasses one’s usual cognitive patterns and awakens our basest instincts from their dormancy. We are suddenly more aware of our surroundings – of every sound, every movement, every smell. You walk on, but from that point onward, you are different.

The idle banter dries up and the pace slows as one avoids standing on twigs and leaves that might give away your presence. This change is gratifying for the guide as people are suddenly receptive to even the smallest details that the forest chooses to show to them; lichen on a tree trunk, what an elephant had for breakfast, the smell of wild kari patta, the eerie wingbeats of a distant giant hornbill.

Like an ancient manuscript being deciphered, the forest slowly emerges as an intricate web of symbiotic organisms and a few hours of discovery is invariably never long enough.  

When the shadows begin to lengthen and weary walkers head home to a warm bonfire, whether or not you have spotted a fleeing sambar or a distant elephant, you cannot help emerging from a walk in Corbett’s forests with a new understanding and respect for this wild space knowing that - even briefly - you have walked in the footsteps of tigers.