“Made Great Friends Because of a Tiger”

This goes back to April 2019. Around two months before that, I received a call from Kolkata. Someone had given them my reference and they said, “We heard you have a resort in Kanha and that you’re good at arranging safaris.” They told me that they’d been visiting tiger reserves for a long time but had never had a proper tiger sighting. They hoped Kanha would finally bless them with at least one good tiger encounter.

I made their booking. There were four of them – Manan bhai and his wife, Amitava Dada, and Biswanath Dada. After they arrived, I gave them a little introduction to the jungle before they headed out for their afternoon safari. Unfortunately, it started raining soon after they entered the forest, and they returned disappointed. For some reason, I couldn’t accompany them on that first safari.

That evening, during dinner, they looked quite dejected and said, “Looks like our luck is really bad… and now with rain in the very first safari of six, what hope is left?” I reassured them and said, “Don’t lose hope. You will see a tiger.”

Next morning, we got up early for the safari. By 4 AM, I had already parked our jeep near the gate to be among the first to enter. At 5:45, as the park gate opened, we entered the forest. Barely 20 minutes in, my eyes caught something on the road ahead and I whispered, “Tiger…”

Our driver stopped the jeep at a respectful distance. And there he was — our hero, Chhota Munna, T-29, sitting calmly in the middle of the road. What happened next was pure magic. For the next 28 minutes, he stayed right there. We clicked so many pictures that our memory cards ran out of space!

And that was just the beginning — over the course of 5 safaris, they saw 12 different tigers. They left so full of joy and said, “MJ bhai, we will come to Kanha every year now!” And true to their word, they did. Today, they’re not just guests — they’ve become some of my closest, family-like friends.