A tiger is not the point, and then it is
Everybody books a park for the tiger and then spends most of the time watching everything else — langur alarm calls moving through the canopy, a sloth bear crossing a track, sambar standing very still for a reason you cannot see yet.
That is not a consolation prize. It is the actual experience, and the sighting, when it comes, is made by the two hours of nothing that preceded it. A park visited for a guaranteed photograph is a park that will disappoint you.
Two practical things. Parks close in the monsoon months, so wildlife pins the calendar harder than anything else in a journey. And your naturalist decides the distance, always — the distance is what makes it a sighting rather than a disturbance.
