Kanha
Sal forest that opens without warning into wide grass maidans — the landscape most people are picturing when they say they want to see a tiger in India.
The park, mapped
How Kanha sits
Kanha is the big one — a core of sal forest opening into the wide grass maidans that made its name, wrapped in a deep buffer. Four gates spread the traffic, so two camps on opposite sides of this map are really two different parks to drive. The meadows are the point: they are where a tiger crosses open ground in photographable light.
The place
Forest, then suddenly grassland
Kanha is much larger than Bandhavgarh and structured differently. Tall sal forest gives way to maidans — open grassland basins, several kilometres across, which were villages before the park was consolidated. The transition is abrupt, and it is where the park's best photography happens: an animal in the open, at distance, with room to compose.
It also holds the barasingha, the hard-ground swamp deer, which exists in the wild essentially here and nowhere else. A herd of them in a misted maidan at first light is one of the few genuinely distinctive images central India offers, and almost nobody comes for it.
23,059 foreign visitors entered Kanha in 2024–25, up 27%. It is the natural pairing with Bandhavgarh — about five hours by road, and different enough that the two parks do not produce the same photographs.
The essentials
Kanha in numbers
- With a naturalist
- From USD 1,100 per person, in a group of seven
- State
- Madhya Pradesh
- Nearest airport
- Jabalpur (JLR), about 4 hours by road
- Also reachable via
- Nagpur (NAG), about 5–6 hours
- Core zones
- Kisli, Mukki, Kanha, Sarhi
- Terrain
- Sal forest, bamboo, open grassland maidans
- Season
- October to June; closed in the monsoon
- Signature species
- Bengal tiger, barasingha, dhole
- Best light
- December–February mornings, mist on the maidans
- Foreign entries 2024–25
- 23,059 (up 27% year on year)
The safari at Kanha was one of the best ones I've experienced. Not only because of the magnificent sightings but also the way Lala explained everything and went above and beyond to make sure we document everything in a safe and sustainable way — keeping the wildlife at the centre of everything while also making it fun.
Lala helped us navigate through the magical forests of Kanha. He lucidly explained the various zones and what is exclusive to the region.
Beyond the drives
The buffer villages are part of the story
Trips here have ended with a visit to Earth Focus, an NGO working on the ecological and economic resilience of the forest-dwelling communities in Kanha's buffer zone. Guests consistently name it as one of the parts they did not expect to remember.
It is included because tiger conservation in India is a question about people who live next to tigers, and a week spent photographing the animal without meeting that question is a week spent with half the picture.
Kanha questions
Is Kanha better than Bandhavgarh?
They are different rather than ranked. Bandhavgarh is smaller with a higher density, so the odds per drive are better. Kanha is larger and more open, so when a sighting happens there is more often room to make a photograph rather than a record. Most guests do both.
What is a maidan?
An open grassland basin inside the forest. Several of Kanha's were village land before the park was consolidated in the 1970s. They hold the barasingha herds, they are where mist collects on winter mornings, and they give a tiger sighting a background.
Can I see barasingha anywhere else?
The hard-ground subspecies survives in the wild essentially only at Kanha. It came within a few dozen animals of extinction and the recovery is the park's quiet achievement.