It usually takes two mugs of strong filter coffee to turn me my correct colour in the mornings. Three at this unspeakable hour.

But I’ll make do with water.

It’s 5:40am.

I’m up at this time to go on a tiger safari with my friend Cameron in Jim Corbett National Park in Northern India.

I’ve been told that, by the afternoon, all the tigers are either spooked or fed up so it’s better to go as early as possible to have the best chance of seeing one.

What is a "licensed" safari, anyway?

Our gypsy jeep leaves from the reception of our high-end yet peculiar hotel, which is already humming with activity.

The chai and biscuits are flowing, and the staff are so fresh that they might have been replaced since yesterday with identically-uniformed clones like in the film Moon.

We didn’t book the safari in the UK because every operator we found was also blacklisted on Jim Corbett National Park’s website for operating unofficially.

Instead, we booked it yesterday directly through our hotel.

Whether this safari is licensed or not, we can't exactly tell, but booking it this way at least guarantees our driver and jeep exist and will show up.

And the hotel is part of the Radisson chain, which, being reasonably high-end, ought to ensure at least some operational oversight.

But that's not guaranteed, of course.

And what does “licensed” even mean?

Allowed through the gate into the park?

How scrupulous are the staff on the gate?

So many vehicles assemble in the courtyard of the hotel, it’s difficult to believe they are all operating with the blessing of the Indian Government.

Going on a tiger safari in India

We hop onto the rear bench of our jeep and cruise in convoy down to the nearby park gate.

The sun isn’t up yet, and the air coming down from the mountains is cold enough to make our eyes water and stuff our hands into our pockets.

When we arrive, a listless herd of jeeps backs up around the gate, revving their engines.

These jacked-up customs, rocking in the morning fog, create a scene straight out of Mad Max.

The customary gaggle of wallahs dole out balaclavas and battered-looking binoculars in exchange for a small fee.

I try a pair out, but they only make what I’m looking at marginally larger and blurrier, so I decline them and everything else they offer.

At 6:30am, the gates open and we head in.

The dancing elephant

The roar of the jeeps fades as we all pick our separate ways into the park.

Before long, all we can hear is the crunch of our tires and our own engine, just above tick‑over, while our headlamps pick out eerie shapes in the gloom.

We’ve picked up a very knowledgeable guide who joins Cameron, our driver, and I in the Jeep.

The guide is clearly used to much warmer weather, and speaks through a heavy balaclava that covers his mouth and makes him difficult to understand.

Dawn hasn’t yet broken as we creep across a lunar river bed that’s almost completely dry. Dead and bare trees reach out from the murk as if to snatch us out of the way.

There are several villages inside the park and we pass through one.

At this time of the morning, it’s devoid of life and movement, and looks abandoned.

Our first stop is a medium-sized compound encircled by electrified barbed wire.

A solitary elephant that looks sad and tormented bobs and dances in a ramshackle little berth for the gratification of the visitors.

Cameron and I are both silent, and I suspect we both feel the same sinking feeling in our hearts.

Already knowing the dreaded answer, I ask our guide why the elephant is here and why it is dancing.

“For the entertainment of the people,” he replies.

I feel a bit sick and depressed, but something in me needed to hear my suspicion said aloud.

The optimism and eagerness that built up during our first proper reset since leaving our homes for India three nights ago drains away.

In the eyes of many Asians, westerners treat animals with undue sentimentality. But this ugly sight, like countless other sights that await visitors to India, tests the glib phrase, “I enjoy travel.”

Do we?

Or do we enjoy destinations, and even then, only those that test us within tacit limits?

I asked a foolish question and got an answer that I loathed.

No one hands out medals when you step off your return flight for putting yourself in front of scenes that are difficult to watch. Except perhaps for soldiers and journalists.

And I know that this kind of animal cruelty exists in the world.

Suffice to say that all I can think while standing and looking at this lone elephant, surrounded by wire and so keen to impress us with its dance moves is, “what the f*ck am I doing here?”

Animal cruelty is depressing

My depression is hard to shake.

Our guide is so knowledgeable and reverent towards the wildlife that I convince myself that he cannot be directly responsible for the scene with the elephant any more than that he earns his living showing people this otherwise incredible park.

Later on, he orders the driver to stop so he can pick up a single chocolate bar wrapper—an act that brought a lump to my throat.

King Canute might have considered this a futile act in India, so swamped with trash as it is.

But because of moving acts like this, the tide of trash sweeping away the rest of the country’s beauty hasn’t yet engulfed Jim Corbett National Park.

Breathtaking views but not of tigers

Jim Corbett National Park occupies about 520 square kilometres and is home to somewhere around 260 Royal Bengal Tigers. So, the chances of encountering one on safari are reasonable with a knowledgeable guide.

The closest we get to an encounter is a fresh paw print deftly placed into some tyre tracks we have made on one of our many doglegs.

Judging by the paw print, tigers place their back paws into the impression made by their front ones, presumably to conserve energy.

I infer this because there is a ghost of a second paw print superimposed over a much clearer one.

The biodiversity within the park is breathtaking.

Particularly impressive are the Banyan trees.

These are a type of fig and are epiphytes—that is, they grow and cling to the surface of other plants.

Locally, they are called “parasite” trees, because they feel around blindly until they encounter a host tree to cling to.

Once they have gripped their host, they shoot upwards and rob it of space and light.

Dozens of feelers and proto-trunks hang off the crushed and encaged host like runnels of wax on a sacrificial altar.

We’re also treated to sights of sambar, spotted, and barking deer; kingfishers, junglefowl, serpent eagles, langur monkeys, and jackals.

Termite mounds emit a nightmarish sound

Cairn-like termite mounds stud the ground beside the dirt roads and have a disgusting quality that I had never before noticed.

They emit a horrid crawling sound.

It’s rather like a thin broth coming to the boil or a parasite burrowing into your ear canal.

Specifically, it’s the sound of a million tiny legs scratching at the damp earth; innumerable wet little bodies swarming over one another in the dark hive.

A sound that will give you nightmares.

Sunrise in Jim Corbett National Park

Sunrise in the park burns off the fog and my depression.

The renewed heat releases earthy, loamy smells richer than anything I have experienced on an autumnal walk in the UK.

Cameron has hay fever, so he is too bunged up to appreciate this dimension.

We backtrack to where we saw the dancing elephant and note that it isn’t anywhere in the compound. I hopefully (or naïvely) take this to be a sign that it’s treated humanely for at least part of its day.

By the time the sun has fully risen, I feel grateful for the positive sights I have seen and nearly back to myself again.

For our four-hour romp through Jim Corbett National Park and their insightful descriptions of the nature we have seen, we offer our driver and guide generous tips after they drop us back at the hotel, and jog down to feast at the breakfast buffet before the food is cleared away.

On the issue of animal rights and tourism

George Orwell wrote a famous essay about a man who has to shoot an elephant to save a village and regrets it.

Observing the “preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have,” he considers the act tantamount to murder.

(Spoiler: the protagonist kills the elephant to save face and protect his colonial power that, ironically, he detests.)

As Carl Safina points out in his passionate account of animal feelings and social intelligence Beyond Words, these creatures display deep and complex emotions, particularly in regard to their maternal instincts.

Families of female elephants may return, multiple times over, to spots where their relatives have died and appear very much to mourn.

Foreign visitors to India, without the help of TV fixers, and without Royal blood that might entitle them to order every unsatisfactory thing out of the way, will have to endure depressing sights seen through weary eyes.

The three main solutions to this are to

1. Not visit at all
2. Go to manicured and sanitized places where local people or culture have been evicted
3. Visit frequently to become accustomed to things

None of these amounts to the humane treatment of animals, and seeing them being mistreated is a different type of cost incurred by the visitor.

Avoided by staying at home, perhaps, but not erased.