Bandhavgarh National Park, India
This is an old webpage carried forward to our new site. Please note that some of the information might be out of date and we probably have newer footage.
Bandhavgarh National Park
Bandhavgarh National Park is a large park in south central India, about a 2-3 hour drive from Jabalpur. It is world-renowned for its tigers. A person can generally hope to see a tiger in about 2-3 days of tracking, with March-April being the best time of the year. Like most India parks you will need a guide and permit to enter the park. Although somewhat restricting in terms of movement and the time you can spend in the park, the guides are amazing at locating tigers and know many of the animals individually and their habits.
To westerners, especially to people from the United States, perhaps the most amazing thing about Bandhavgarh is how the local people co-exist with tigers. Unlike many parks in South Africa, there are no fences separating the predators from the nearby farms and towns. Although the tigers generally stay within the park and they avoid people of foot, incidents do happen and people are killed. Yet there’s no outcry from the local populace to exterminate all the tigers. This may be due in part to the fact that tigers bring in many jobs and revenue from ecotourism, a critical need in the rural impoverished areas surrounding the park. But there’s probably more to it than that. The people seem to be genuinely proud of tigers and want to conserve them. So even though the population of India continues to grow, as does the demand for land, at places like Bandhavgarh National Park the tiger still survives in the wild.
Bandhavgarh National Park Stock Footage
Bandhavgarh National Park is world famous for its tigers. There may be not better place in the world to see a Bengal tiger in the wild. They are truly one of the world’s most impressive beasts and a prize for any photographer or videographer. But there’s much more to Bandhavgarh than tigers. The site is rich in biological diversity, rivaled perhaps only by Africa. There is no end of things to see and film. However, that is not to say that filming wildlife at the park is easy. The biggest challenge is that you are generally restricted to your vehicle meaning that a ground-based tripod is a challenge to use. You could try to set the tripod up on the ground while you operate it from inside the vehicle, or you use a bean bag-tripod head mount or one could remove some seats from the jeep and set your tripod up in the back. The latter methods of course make the use of long lens difficult because of camera shake. Fortunately, most of Bandhavgarh is thick forest so your shots will be close. Nevertheless you should bring a long lens as well to focus on the bird life and other wildlife found at the park.