Jaisal Singh Bhati

Kanha Tiger Reserve — Madhya Pradesh

Jaisal Singh
Bhati

Field naturalist and safari guide, working the sal forests and meadows of Kanha.

On foot — buffer zone, spring

Most of the forest
is not the tiger

Termite mounds, alarm calls, a spider that rebuilds its web every evening. Walk slowly enough with someone who knows it, and the whole thing fills in around you.

Guided walks

After dark — sheet, lamp, journal

The forest doesn't
stop at sundown

A white sheet, a UV tube, and whatever comes in. Years of it, now a published field guide to the moths of the reserve.

Moths of Kanha
Scroll

On foot

Guided walks

A vehicle covers ground. Walking is how you notice what the ground is telling you — and in the buffer forest around Kanha there is a great deal of it.

  • What you actually see

    Rarely the animal first. Pugmarks in the dust, a scrape at the edge of a track, the alarm call of a langur two ridges over that tells you something is moving. The reading matters more than the sighting.

  • Where it happens

    The buffer forest and the land around the lodge — sal, bamboo and the open maidans between them. Not the core of the reserve, where walking is not permitted.

  • Who it suits

    Anyone happy to go slowly and stop often. Photographers working on something specific, and people who have done the drives and want the detail the vehicle goes past.

Buffer forest, on foot

Practical detail

Duration
—
Group size
—
Season
—
Booking
—

Times, group size, season and booking still to come from Jaisal

Professional services

Services Provided

With field experience across guiding, research, and conservation, I contribute in the following areas:

Wildlife Guiding & Safari Experiences

  • Guided safaris and nature walks
  • Wildlife behavior interpretation
  • Guest engagement and storytelling

Field Research & Conservation Support

  • Biodiversity surveys and monitoring
  • Wildlife tracking and data collection
  • Camera trapping and field support

Forestry & Habitat Assessment

  • Habitat analysis and vegetation study
  • Forest ecology understanding
  • Sustainable land management support

Wildlife Documentation & Photography Assistance

  • Assisting wildlife photographers
  • Species identification and documentation
  • Visual storytelling support

Conservation Education & Outreach

  • Educational interpretation
  • Wildlife content creation
  • Awareness initiatives

Flexible Field Roles & Collaboration

  • Open to diverse field roles
  • Comfortable in remote environments
  • Short-term & long-term availability

Interested in working together or collaborating on a project? Let’s connect.

Get in Touch

Camera traps — passive recording

What walks past when nobody is watching

Motion-triggered units left out for weeks at a time. No bait, no lure — just a camera on a trail and the patience to come back for it.

CAM-00 · 00/00/00 · 00:00

Bengal tiger Panthera tigris tigris

Zone —Daylight8s

CAM-00 · 00/00/00 · 00:00

Sloth bear Melursus ursinus

Zone —Infrared8s

CAM-00 · 00/00/00 · 00:00

Indian leopard Panthera pardus fusca

Zone —Daylight8s

Placeholder footage — replace before launch

Active work

Ongoing projects

Fieldwork, writing and outreach — some finished, most still running.

Published July 2026

Moths of Kanha

The first field guide devoted to the moths of a single Indian tiger reserve. Hundreds of species, drawn from years of night work at lit sheets — photographed, identified and documented across Kanha and the forest around it.

Written with his mother Dimple Bhati and naturalist Aniruddha Dhamorikar, and released to coincide with National Moth Week.

Read more
Cover image to come

Moths are recorded far less often than the animals people travel to Kanha for, and a reserve-level guide to them did not exist. The species accounts here were built the slow way: a lit sheet after dark, a camera, and whatever came to the light that night, worked through season by season.

The result covers hundreds of species from Kanha and the forest around it, each photographed and identified rather than drawn from existing literature.

Still to confirm

  • Publisher, ISBN, page count and price
  • Where to buy it — the entry does not publish without a link

Dimple Bhati · Jaisal Singh Bhati · Aniruddha Dhamorikar TODO: publisher, ISBN, buy link

Ongoing

Guiding at Kanha Jungle Lodge

Naturalist at the family lodge on the edge of the reserve, leading safaris and walks for visitors from India and abroad.

Read more

The lodge sits at Mukki, on the edge of the reserve. Guiding there means safaris into the park itself and walks in the forest around it, where the interpretation matters as much as the sightings.

Still to confirm

  • That this is his current role, and how it should be described

Kanha, Madhya Pradesh kanhajunglelodge.com

2019

Nature Wonder — TEDx talk

On growing up inside a tiger reserve, and why conservation has to mean the whole forest rather than one species.

Read more
Talk embed — to be decided

The talk was given at TEDxBodhiInternationalSchool. Its argument is that a reserve is not a tiger enclosure: the moths, the sal, the grasslands and the people living alongside them are the thing being conserved, and treating one species as the whole story gets the conservation wrong.

Watch the talk

TEDxBodhiInternationalSchool Watch on TED

2019

Tigerland — Discovery Channel

Featured in the documentary tracing four generations of the Sankhala family's work in tiger conservation, beginning with his great-grandfather Padma Shri Kailash Sankhala, first director of Project Tiger.

Read more
Still or trailer — to come

The series follows the family across four generations of work on tigers, from the founding of Project Tiger through to the people guiding and recording in Kanha now.

About the series

Discovery Channel

Book details and current role need confirming with Jaisal — see source comments

Get in touch

Plan a visit

Safaris, walks and night sessions run from Kanha Jungle Lodge on the Mukki side of the reserve. Tell me roughly when you're thinking of coming and what you'd most like to see.

Replies usually within a couple of days — signal at the lodge is patchy

Kanha Jungle Lodge — Mukki, Manjitola Madhya Pradesh 481111, India Open in maps kanhajunglelodge.com