Kanha

Kanha National Park, in Madhya Pradesh, is thought to have inspired Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book, and its sal and bamboo forests still feel like something from the story. It is one of India’s best-managed reserves for tiger viewing, and also holds the last population of the hard-ground barasingha, a swamp deer found nowhere else in the wild. The park’s size means genuinely varied terrain across a single visit, from open meadows to dense forest, and crowds remain lighter than at some other reserves.