Tigers of the Emerald Forest

“It really is a very educational movie,” our hostess said to Rachel when we declined to watch in favor of trying to catch up on our ongoing academics. My rare and hopeful attempts to keep my girls’ minds from wandering too far from the 3 R’s kept getting interrupted by thing more urgent or unique than book material.

“They are waiting for us,” Rachel said, so we wrapped up our thought, slipped into our sandals and headed through the tall narrow double doors that sealed our mud hut from the elements. The sinuous path to the communal area felt farther away on account of the tall grasses that hide it from view, but in a moment we approached Joanna who greeted us. “Oh good, I’m glad you came.”

The few guests at Sarai at Toria were gathered on comfortable couches around a small TV that had been brought in for the occasion. My family joined Karen, a travel writer who was helping contribute to a book on Indian eco lodges. BBC, the film opened, and the sound system was surprisingly good given the relative lack of technology at the lodge.

As the film began I recognized voices. And then faces. Many years younger, but the same ones as our hosts. Joanna and Raghu, our hosts, were not your average hoteliers, nor even your average conservationists, it turned out. They were the storytellers of this film, the main characters who started to teach us about the Tigers of Panna. What were these animals’ habits? Who were their families? What of their loves, concerns, friends and enemies? Raghu unfolded the rich society of tigers to us as a world expert might do. We were staying with scientists, with celebrities, and the most humble sort, the sort who don’t bother to tell you, “this is our film.”

I’m really not a huge nature documentary guy, but…this film. Full of details and drama. And aftermath. Emerald Forest tells the story of a rising tiger population, but shortly after it was released tragedy befell Raghu and the tigers. Poachers hit the park hard, for year after year. Raghu, who sounded the alarm in Delhi, was summarily ignored, and then fired, until almost every tiger was dead. Authorities offered innocuous excuses and covered up the atrocities while they slowly rebuilt the population with imported animals that are today guarded by camera traps and rangers in watch towers and Jeeps. Authorities have relocated local farmers and their livestock from the park, to protect both cows and tigers from their incompatible ways of life. 

And Raghu and Joanna support their conservation efforts in a more indirect way. I was told by another guest that they lost their scientific jobs, their funding, and the tigers they loved. But they did not lose their love of these large and graceful cats, and now they share it with unwitting guests like us who happen upon their graceful Sarai at Toria, an oasis in the jungle. With good food and a gentle nudge to watch an educational film and drive around the park with one of their expert guides, they have made a bit of an activist out of me, a guy who never really cared about tigers until now. 

We leave Panna today but our stay here will stay with me. I will spend my days thinking and hoping for the tigers. Hoping they survive a few more generations. Hoping that they outrace the poachers in a world where human competition seems to consume any animal unlucky enough to be both slow to reproduce and a bit too valuable to our destructive species.