India - Guides
World Big Cat Safaris uses local guides wherever possible in each destination that we offer. We believe that local guides offer that little bit more that can make the difference between a good safari and a great safari.
Please find two expert guides listed below whom we are fortunate enough to have leading our Ultimate Year of the Tiger Safari in February 2011:
DR RAGHU CHUNDAWAT:
Raghunandan 
Singh Chundawat studied botany at university but did his PHD in wildlife science, pioneering the first study on snow leopards in India. After fourteen years of work on high altitude mammals, he is a recognised expert on the Himalayan and trans-Himalayan regions. He completed his PHD in 1992 on the Ecology of snow leopards and their prey species in the Trans-Himalayan region of Ladakh, India.
For over a decade, Dr Chundawat was a faculty member of India’s premier institute, the Wildlife Institute of India where he trained wildlife managers from India and South-East Asia and taught Conservation Biology and Mammalogy from 1992-2002. While there he also supervised several research projects on the Big Cats of India.
Dr. Raghu Chundawat has been very intensively involved with tiger conservation since 1996 when he started the only study of the ecology of tigers in Tropical Dry Forest. During this nine year study, he monitored several generations of radio-collared tigers and documented why tigers are more vulnerable in Dry forest than in other habitats of the subcontinent. In recognition of his research and conservation work, he was awarded the ESSO Honour for Tiger Conservation for special effort in 2001, the Carl Zeiss Wildlife Conservation Award for excellence in the science of tiger Conservation in 2002 and in 2003 he received the Tiger Gold award for outstanding scientific work with wild tigers.
A member of the Cat Specialist Group of IUCN, Dr. Chundawat was also a member of the Wildlife Advisory Board for Madhya Pradesh for many years. He is currently working for the International Snow Leopard Trust as Regional Science and Conservation Director. In this capacity, he supervises conservation and research programmes in central Asian countries, such as Mongolia, Xinxiang China, Kirgyzstan, Bhutan, Afghanistan and India. He has also held several positions as Research Associate for National Zoo, the Smithsonian Institute, the Wildlife Conservation Society and has worked extensively in Kanha National Park.
He has published extensively in scientific journals and books and in popular magazines. He had also worked with the BBC and Natural History Unit New Zealand as scientific consultant for their films series – Land of the Tiger and Wild Asia- At the Edge. BBC - Natural World produced an award winning films, “Tigers of the Emerald Forest”, based on his research work in Panna Tiger Reserve and Dr Chundawat features as an authoritative spokesperson in the several films (such as BBC films “Battle to Save the Tiger” and “Tiger Zero” made on the crises that threatens the future of tigers in India.
DHRUV SINGH:
Dhruv was born into a family that had been involved with conservation well before the inception of Tiger reserves, a time when wildlife was abundant and forests covered most of Central India.
Born in 1973, his childhood was spent in Bandhavgarh and the s
urrounding forests, walking for days through forests with old shikari's turned forest guards, learning to track animals and spending time with the villagers deep in the jungles. After studying art in America, Dhruv returned to India to work with the BBC on the first comprehensive wildlife film on the Indian sub continent ‘Land of the Tiger’, at the end of 3 years of working on the documentary Dhruv had visited and spent long periods working in most of the Tiger Reserves of Northern India. With a sound understanding of the forests and Tiger tracking he worked with wildlife film crews and professional photographers as a naturalist and field advisor.
Dhruv moved back to Bandhavgarh in 2003 and set up Churhat Kothi, a milestone in wildlife lodges. Churhat Kothi was a lodge that worked with the highly trained naturalists and reinvented the level of hospitality in wildlife safaris in India. In 2006 he moved onto his next project ‘Anant Van’ meaning infinite forest; this Lodge was established in a far end of The Tiger Reserve, it bordered a village that barely had any contact with the main road, visitors, tourism and the rest of the world was well off its radar. Anant Van was built and run on the lines of a village based reforestation centre, the idea was to grow forest trees of Central India and create a bank of native trees, a small tented camp was also established to encourage visitors to participate in this project.
Dhruv joined hands with Pradip Krishen (author of ‘Trees of Delhi’) and began work on publishing a book on the ‘Jungle Trees of Central India’. With this project Dhruv traveled with Pradip to many parts of the Central Indian jungles learning about the forests and educating himself on types of forests.
In 2009 Dhruv started a new project and Monsoon Forest was set up and the first flush of reforestation planting was done in the monsoon of 2009. A small camp of six tents was established and the reforestation project was set up as the core focus. Dhruv is now working on making a sustainable model for involving the local communities and gearing up to make the planting of Indigenous forest trees as a mission. ‘Forests for Tigers’ is the main objective of the Monsoon Forest reforestation project and Dhruv is currently working on this.
