Author Description

Written with a personal touch, the book focuses on 35 years of Valmik Thapar's engagement with tigers in Ranthambhore National Park and across India. Thapar takes us on a journey of a lifetime from Ranthambhore's ancient and hallowed history and the story of the last two decades of tiger conservation in India to the questionable role of the government to more heartening stories of how local villagers took up conservation-related activities in the quest to find solutions to save the striped predator. This book is a tribute to the late Fateh Singh Rathore. Intertwined with the narrative is the story of a special friendship between Thapar and Rathore-a partnership that witnessed the duo fighting tooth and claw to try and turn adversity in the tiger's favour.This work is unique among the annals of tiger conservation for presenting field notes on nearly 150 different tigers in one location spread over 35 years. With the inclusion of the first black and white photographs taken in the mid-1970s through the later colour transparencies of the mid-1980s to the more recent digital images from the present century, the book illustrates a journey of wildlife photography spread across four decades. With its lavish spread of close to 1200 photographs, this book will appeal to wildlife specialists and anybody wanting to know more about a man who is widely known as the conscience of a nation as far as tiger conservation is concerned.