Central India Tiger Safari

Met at Jabalpur airport and driven about 160 km south-east to the Khatia or Mukki gate, four hours through Mandla and villages of mud-and-tile houses. Settle into the lodge in time for tea, a walk in the buffer forest and a briefing from your naturalist on how the park reads: chital alarm calls, langur posts, and which maidan the barasingha are using this month.

Gates open at first light. The morning drive works the Kanha and Kisli zone, where the central maidan holds the hard-ground barasingha found nowhere else on earth, and where tiger sightings usually begin with a sambar barking somewhere out of sight. Back for a late breakfast and a rest through the hot hours. The afternoon drive goes out again until the gate closes, finishing at Bamni Dadar for the sunset.

A second morning drive, this time entering by Mukki on the park's south-western side, thicker bamboo and a different set of resident tigresses. Return for breakfast, then spend the afternoon out of the vehicle: a walk to a Baiga or Gond hamlet with a lodge guide, learning which forest plants still go into cooking and medicine, and an hour at the Kanha museum for the reserve's relocation history.

Leave after breakfast for Bandhavgarh, 250 km and about five and a half hours through Dindori and Umaria, cotton and wheat on both sides of the road. Check in near Tala by early afternoon and take the day's second safari slot in the Magadhi zone, where the meadows around Charger Point are good for tiger and the ponds fill with sambar as the light drops.

The Tala zone at dawn, the classic Bandhavgarh drive under the sandstone cliff, past Sita Mandap and the Chakradhara meadow where cubs are often seen. After breakfast, permits allowing, drive up to the fort plateau for the ten-metre Shesh Shaiya, a reclining Vishnu carved in the tenth century at the head of a spring that still runs. Afternoon safari in Khitauli, the quietest of the zones.

About 240 km west and north, five and a half hours through Satna to Khajuraho. Take the Western Group in the low afternoon light, when the sandstone goes honey-coloured: Kandariya Mahadeva rising 31 metres in a deliberate imitation of a mountain range, the Lakshmana temple's frieze of armies and elephants, and the Chitragupta sun god driving seven horses. Evening at the sound and light show in the enclosure.

Take the Eastern Group's Jain temples first, then drive 175 km to Orchha, about four hours by way of Chhatarpur. Cross the arched bridge into the fort island for Jehangir Mahal, built in 1605 for a single imperial visit, and the murals of Raja Mahal. At sunset, walk down to Kanchana Ghat, where fourteen Bundela cenotaphs stand with their feet in the Betwa and vultures nest on the spires.

Walk the Chaturbhuj temple's high terraces for the view over the town's roofs and the river, then look in at the Laxmi Narayan temple, whose ceilings carry painted scenes of the 1857 fighting at Jhansi. A last plate of poha and jalebi in the bazaar before the short 18 km transfer to Jhansi for the Shatabdi to Delhi or the drive on to Agra.