Experiences · Excursions
Excursions
Wildlife as a classroom. Structured outdoor-learning programs for school and university groups — time in the field with naturalists and host communities, designed to build ecological literacy and a first-hand relationship with the wild before young people decide what to make of the world.
Open now · One program
Achanakmar Tiger Reserve
A 7-night outdoor learning program in one of central India’s finest tiger landscapes — built around Tiger Landscapes, our keystone species for central India.
Duration
8 days / 7 nights
Dates
14 – 21 July 2026
Cohort
20 – 24 students
Base camp
Buffer-zone field station
You don’t learn the forest by visiting it. You learn it by sitting in it long enough that it forgets you are there.
The invitation
Why Achanakmar. Why now.
Located in
Bilaspur & Mungeli, Chhattisgarh
Declared
39th Tiger Reserve, 2009
Landscape
Sal forest · bamboo · riverine
Neighbours
Kanha–Bandhavgarh corridor
Achanakmar Tiger Reserve sits in the Bilaspur–Mungeli districts of Chhattisgarh, in a corner of central India where forest, river and community still hold each other together. Declared India’s 39th Tiger Reserve in 2009, it is part of the Achanakmar–Amarkantak Biosphere Reserve, and its corridors reach toward Kanha and Bandhavgarh — a stitch in one of the country’s most important tiger landscapes.
We chose Achanakmar because it is honest. It is not a manicured experience. It is a working landscape where conservation, livelihoods, governance and ecology are negotiated every day. For a cohort that will go on to build technology, that complexity is the point. You cannot design for the natural world if you have not stood inside it.
The eight days
A week, in your hands.
The rhythm of the program at a glance. Plans flex around weather and field conditions — that is part of the practice.
Mon · 14 Jul
Arrival & Welcome
Travel to camp · orientation · first night sounds walk.
Tue · 15 Jul
Natural History of Indian Forests
Reading the Indian forest: from Champion & Seth to a single Sal leaf.
Wed · 16 Jul
Tiger Landscape Conservation
Buffer safari · Project Tiger module · camera traps & pugmark casting.
Thu · 17 Jul
Wildlife Tracking & Birding
Tracks, scat, scrapes, alarm calls · habitat-based birding · eBird night.
Fri · 18 Jul
Community Engagement
Baiga–Gond village immersion · elders’ circle · cooking with the women’s collective.
Sat · 19 Jul
Government & IWT
Field Director interaction · anti-poaching camp · illegal wildlife trade workshop.
Sun · 20 Jul
Leadership & Storytelling
Conservation leadership lab · documenting the field · open mic projection.
Mon · 21 Jul
Reflection & Departure
Final dawn walk · closing circle · transfer to Bilaspur.
What you will learn
Ten ways to read a forest.
Not isolated modules — threads that get pulled, dropped, and picked up again across the week. By Day 8, you will have spent time inside all ten.
Natural History of Indian Forests
A working introduction to India’s forest typology, with an honest focus on central India’s Sal-bamboo systems. Learn to read the hand of climate, soil and fire on a forest — and to name what you see.
Tiger Landscape Conservation
How a single tiger needs hundreds of square kilometres, and why corridors matter. Project Tiger from 1973, what a Tiger Reserve actually does, and where Achanakmar fits in the Kanha–Bandhavgarh landscape.
Tiger & Wildlife Tracking
Field craft. Tracks, scat, scrapes, kills, alarm calls, behaviour. Learn what is left behind, what it means, and how to make a sober inference instead of a hopeful guess.
Birdwatching Exercises
A craft you can carry for the rest of your life. Optics, field guides, eBird logging, and the discipline of slow looking. Leave with your own first checklist of central Indian birds.
Community Engagement
A full day with Baiga and Gond hosts — elders, kitchens, younger residents. Encounter the forest as a home, not a backdrop, and rethink what ‘stakeholder’ means.
Government Engagement
A morning with the Field Director and frontline staff. The bureaucratic, financial and political reality of running a tiger reserve, seen up close.
Illegal Wildlife Trade & Trafficking
A serious workshop on the trade in pangolins, tiger parts, freshwater turtles and birds. How investigations work, how WCCB, TRAFFIC and WPSI operate, and where technology can make a difference.
Safaris & Forest Trails
Buffer-zone safaris and on-foot trails with naturalists and Forest Department guides. Slow movement, shared silence, and the long patience that wildlife asks for.
Leadership Development
Practical and in-the-field. Facilitation, ethical decisions in real situations, team dynamics — built around a real ATR challenge, not a hypothetical case.
Documenting & Storytelling
Photography, voice and writing as field practice, and the ethics of imagery in conservation. By the last evening you will have a single story of place — yours — to share.
The outcomes
What you take back.
You will not leave Achanakmar a tiger expert — eight days is too short. What you leave with is subtler, and we think more useful.
- →A working vocabulary for Indian forests — types, species, processes — that lets you read any landscape for the rest of your life.
- →A first-hand sense of what tiger conservation actually involves: not just animals, but communities, governments, money and trade.
- →A field journal you wrote yourself — sketches, lists, observations — that will read better in five years than any photo.
- →Your own central-India bird checklist, in eBird, that you can keep adding to.
- →A short story of place — photo, words or audio — produced in the field and shared with the cohort.
- →A clearer view of where technology can and cannot help conservation — and where careful tools are most needed.
- →A network of peers, naturalists, community hosts and forest officers to keep learning from after the program ends.
Take it with you
The full programme.
Two documents go deeper than this page — the participant field notes and the day-by-day agenda. Download, read slowly, mark them up.
Bringing a student cohort? Let’s design your time in the field.