I am here in India looking for tigers, and am struck by the way my fellow human beings respond to their encounters —what they want from the whole tiger experience. It is a privilege to see these animals in the wild, and believe me, you can easily fail.

Years ago I spent days tracking them at another park, and though the gamekeepers kept up a plucky commentary — pointing to scratches on trees and snapped grass stems that proved ‘tiger was here’ — we saw neither hide nor hair.