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Your base for Palamu Tiger Reserve.
Ladigarh is where you stay for Palamau Tiger Reserve, one of India's first nine, and Betla National Park within it. Jeep drives at first light, back to the pool by noon.
Palamau Tiger ReserveOne of the first nine.
When Project Tiger began in 1973, Palamau was one of India's first nine tiger reserves. It is still Jharkhand's only one.
The first count
Palamau is credited with the world's first pugmark tiger census, held under forest officer J. W. Nicholson.
The wolves of Mahuadanr
India's only sanctuary for the grey wolf lies in these hills. Foresters have found 78 breeding dens there.
One landscape
The Bandhavgarh–Guru Ghasidas–Palamau forests form one tiger landscape: Palamau's tigers are linked to Madhya Pradesh.
The tigers around us.
Palamau sits in one tiger landscape with Bandhavgarh and Guru Ghasidas, 12,580 square kilometres of forest. The tigers here belong to a much bigger story.
Photographed near Palamu Fort in 2023, he walked the old forest routes for two years and was brought home to Palamu in 2025.
These are portraits, not promises. Come for the forest; the tiger decides.
From hunting forest to tiger forest.
1930When the tiger could be shot
Permit, privilege, game. The Forest Department regulated the rifle; it did not yet save the tiger.
1958The hunt became a system
Quotas, blocks, permits and a fee for every animal shot.
1973–74The forest changed
Project Tiger came to Palamau. The tiger was no longer quarry, but a species to protect.
1980s–2022When the tiger began to disappear
Fewer pugmarks, fewer cubs, then the cameras saw the forest but not its tiger.
TodayThe tigers come back
Not released, not placed. They came back through the forest on their own.
Tigers here are few. Most mornings in Betla are about deer on the road, birds in the sal and the light through the trees. Sightings are never promised.
Betla National ParkThe forts above the Auranga.
Inside Betla stand the twin forts of the Chero kings, above the Auranga river.
Days and nights in the forest.
Satyajit Ray brought four restless men from Calcutta to these forests to do nothing for a few days, and made Aranyer Din Ratri. People still come here for the same reason.
Aranyer Din Ratri (1970), dir. Satyajit Ray · film stills and production photographs · from the Palamu Wall Series
Come and name a hill.