I love travelling. I’m a compulsive tourist. More specifically, a wildlife tourist. Most of us wildlife photographers are just that — wildlife tourists. Photographer Ganesh Shankar famously characterised us lot as weekend warriors. Over the last decade or so, I’ve travelled more outside India than I have inside. While wildlife tourism outside India is seemingly more expensive, I find it to be far greater value for money than a comparable Indian wildlife holiday.

Aside from the banal notions of cost and value for money, though, I’ve come to believe that the nature tourism setup in several African countries is friendlier, more immersive, and far less stressful than their Indian equivalents. In particular, I want to focus on the experience of visiting parks with big game, or charismatic megafauna.

Fair warning: I’m about to get honest about what Indian parks get wrong. If you’re looking for nationalistic flag-waving, this isn’t it. But if you want a clear-eyed view of why Africa keeps winning my heart (and my bookings), and what India could learn, read on. I’ll mainly compare Kruger in South Africa with Tadoba in Maharashtra — both big names, but worlds apart for the hobbyist wildlife traveller.

Where’s that arm and leg, mate?

Let’s be real. Wildlife photography can be expensive even before you set foot in a park. Gear costs a bomb, and for most Indian hobbyists, city parks are laughable. So you pack your bags and head out with the hope that the trip, at least, won’t gut your wallet.

But think again. Even if you go budget for travel and hotels, you can’t escape the sky-high entry fees at Indian parks. Assume you’re an intermediate-level photographer with two cameras. A three-hour weekend game drive in the core zone (inclusive of camera, vehicle and naturalist fees) of Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve costs ₹13,900. That’s about $160 per drive. On weekdays, that cost goes down to ₹9,395. Buffer zone drives cost ₹7,000 on weekends and ₹6,000 on weekdays. Assume a week’s trip where you split your drives across core and buffer zones. Just the drives cost an Indian citizen ₹1,18,775 ($1346). Oh, and if you choose full-day permits, they cost ₹50,000 ($567) per day or ₹350,000 ($3974) per week.

Now compare these costs to visiting the world-famous Kruger National Park. An overseas couple can buy a Wild Card that gets you year-round access to all SanParks-administered parks for the grand sum of ₹33,000 or $374. You can drive your own car or a rental and enjoy the wilderness. A week’s 4x4 rental costs about 15,000 ZAR (₹75,000/ $900). Add about 3500 ZAR for fuel (₹18,000/ $205), and you can cap out your expense under $1500 per week, exclusive of stay and food. These low costs are almost an international standard. Park fees for Yellowstone are laughably low — $35 for a week, and if you buy an “America the Beautiful National Parks Annual Pass”, you can decide to live in their parks for a whole year for just $80!

Park	Country	Permit and vehicle costs for a week
Kruger	🇿🇦	$1,479
Yellowstone	🇺🇸	$1,135
Tadoba	🇮🇳	$1,346-3,974

Of course, you may argue that a week in Tadoba is worth the $1,300-4,000. After all, you stand a chance to see the most beautiful big cat species out there — the tiger. But wait for the gotchas!

Many restrictions, less flexibility.

Remember that the permits I priced out earlier only give you access to a specific zone. To ensure peace of mind, you must book these permits four months in advance. You can’t follow the pattern of sightings in the weeks leading up to a trip to book your permits. So you have no meaningful options but to take a zone gamble.

In contrast, once you enter the Kruger, you can go wherever you want, as long as you’re back through the gates before park closing time. Parks like the Kruger also have sensible rules that facilitate the visitors’ experience. You can drive at 50 kmph on tar roads and 40 kmph on gravel roads. So, if you learn about a sighting or are simply trying to cover ground in the hope of bumping into something special, you have a reasonable speed limit you can stay under. What’s Tadoba’s speed limit? A grand 20 kmph.

Oh, and Tadoba’s park rules state that vehicles must maintain a 50m distance from one another. If one were to follow such a rule, how many cars can be at a sighting before photography is impractical? There’s no such rule in the Kruger.

Self driving is a common way to explore the Southern African wilderness

Moreover, Indian parks are capable of springing up all sorts of arbitrary restrictions. For example, in Tadoba, you can’t carry your mobile phone on game drives. In 2025, this is a preposterous restriction. Regardless of whether you’re a tourist family or a professional photographer, phones are the one handy camera everyone has access to. But Tadoba won’t allow phones in the park, because of some overzealous tourists who once went overboard trying to get a selfie with a tiger.

Some routes can suddenly become one-way only. Parks like Gir, in Gujarat, require you to cover the entire route of your zone, even if you find what you’re looking for within the first 100 metres of your game drive. So yes, a week-long safari to the Kruger can be just as expensive as a trip to Tadoba, but your safari experience is far more flexible in the Kruger. That flexibility, by the way, isn’t just a matter of rules, but a matter of mindsets.

Customer service, or feudal favours?

My last trip to South Africa was somewhat ill-fated. First, my partner on the trip could only join midway. Due to coordination issues, we were unable to access one of our accommodations within the park one night. The Sanparks tourism manager at one of the main rest camps happily swapped me into one of their chalets for that night. Later on in the trip, I had to head back home to attend a family emergency. The tourism manager made all arrangements for my friend to stay back at the park headquarters, while I drove back to Johannesburg. Sanparks could have shrugged their shoulders and told me that my problems are none of their business. But their staff wanted to do the best they could, and that attitude showed in everything they did.

You only have to visit a Sanparks picnic site or stay at one of their inexpensive campsites to know the amount of care that goes into caring for even the lowest-paying visitors to the park. The braai pits are always clean. The restrooms are spic and span. Popular campsites in the Kruger have coffee and snack shops where you can buy yourself a drink or a bite.

There’s a well-appointed scullery, laundry area and kitchenette at most campsites. You know who to complain to when the service or the facilities aren’t up to your expectations. All this makes a difference. You feel like you’re a customer, and Sanparks wants you to have a good time.

We’ve enjoyed many a happy moment at Sanparks’ picnic sites.

In contrast, the attitude of forest department officials in India is as if tourism is a necessary evil and that they’re not offering you a service, but doing you a favour.

Do you need a dedicated vehicle or guide? Go beg the range officer to grant you the favour.
Enjoying a predator sighting? It’s all good until a forest department vehicle decides to chase you off the sighting. Yes, that’s happened to me.
Would you want to go on a specific route in the forest? “Request” the ranger and see if they agree.

Forest departments in India act like feudal lords who grant favours if they see fit. And often, they see it fit only for people in their inner circles.

The curious case of inner circles

Consider the number of camps Sanparks provides inside their national parks so that you can stay overnight in the wilderness. Take their two most popular parks, for example — the Kruger and the Kgalagadi. Then contrast these parks with Tadoba.

	Kruger NP	Kgalagadi TNP (South Africa)
Total in-park stay locations	39	10
Main camps	12	3
Satellite or wilderness camps	12	6 (+2 under construction)
Luxury stays / bush lodges	15	1

I don’t want to single out Tadoba for its lack of government or private-run accommodation inside the park. Take Jim Corbett National Park, a popular tiger reserve that offers in-park accommodation for public reservation. Getting a booking at Dhikala is notoriously tricky, and I’ll leave you to speculate why I use the word “notorious”.

I’m not implying that there are no other accommodations inside national parks. Many parks have forest rest houses, which the forest department can let out at their discretion. Guess who gets access to these rest houses? Ok, I’ll say it. It’s the friends and family of forest department officials - the members of their inner circles.

The Kruger affords beautiful stay options in the heart of the national park

In fact, if you’re in one of these inner circles, there’s no limit to the access you can get. You can jump across zones, customise your vehicle for photography, set up camera traps in collaboration with the forest department, get access to patrolling elephants, stay in the park beyond official timings, and more. I understand that some people will and probably should always have these benefits. It’s the lack of transparency in India that irks me.

In South Africa, I could pay as little as 481 ZAR (approximately $ 28/₹2450) to book a campsite in the Kruger or the Kgalagadi. Once I’m in, I’m in for good. I don’t need to curry favour or be part of an inner circle to drive around the park. I’m a customer, and that’s all that counts.

But let’s say, for argument’s sake, though, that I could secure accommodation inside Periyar, Pench, Satpura, or any other parks that offer in-forest stay. I still can’t escape a cultural imposition.

An imposition of culture and morality

In India’s parks, the rules extend to your dinner plate. Prepare for endless rice, chappati, lentil and potato curries; forget about meat or eggs. Even mentioning alcohol can raise scandalised eyebrows. As a teetotaler myself, I still find the cultural, dietary and moral impositions counterproductive for a tourism setup. “Pure-veg” local food, that you gulp down with strong tea or powdered coffee, is not just the culturally sound choice, but apparently the morally correct choice too.

Contrast these Indian options with options in Southern Africa. If you walk into a restaurant at one of the rest camps in Kruger, you can treat yourself to some epic steaks and sip the best wine from the country’s premier vineyards. If you self-cater, everything’s fair game — from free-range beef to impala burgers. Whiskey, vodka or rum, who’s to judge? As long as you don’t cause a nuisance or harm the surroundings or wildlife, you do you.

The other aspect that bothers me is the adversarial nature of the community and authorities towards photographers and tourists. Only Indian parks charge an extra fee for cameras. I haven’t seen such a tax anywhere else in the world.

The community is no better. Photographers and tourists are a soft target on social media. Every armchair conservationist and their pets are out to bait tourists for the slightest indiscretion.

An animal is skittish.
An animal is habituated.
A bird lands on the ground.
Someone gets too close to a tiger.
Some cars crowd a leopard sighting.
An elephant shakes its head at a safari vehicle.
A bird remains on the ground despite cars nearby.
A tiger slinks into the bush when it sees a tourist car.
A tiger appears on the road after it senses a tourist car.
A peafowl stops displaying after it sees a safari vehicle.
A bird flies off its branch when a tourist vehicle approaches.
A photographer chooses to photograph the flying bird that they “disturbed”.

No indiscretion is too small to highlight the evils of tourism in general and photographers in particular. Many keyboard warriors will trace every problem back to tourists and photographers. No kidding, but I've also seen people equate photographers with trophy hunters.

Photographs such as these, are a way to brand tourists and photographers as “unruly” or “unethical”.

With that much moral outrage, the snare on wildlife tourism has tightened every few seasons. Unsurprisingly, the experience in every wildlife place of interest has only tanked in the last couple of decades. In fact, I don’t know a single park where the experience has improved for the average visitor.

In contrast, Africa welcomes tourism and photography as allies to conservation. No one judges me for wanting decent photos. In fact, there are facilities to help me get those images, such as well-designed waterholes and hides. Let's just say that I feel less judged and more welcome when I'm in Africa.

A painful summary

I may have belaboured the point, but on almost every count, wildlife tourism in Africa (case in point, the Kruger) is a higher quality experience than its Indian equivalent (case in point, Tadoba). Here’s a summary of how the experiences compare.

	Tadoba, India (and other parks)	Kruger, South Africa
Permit and vehicle costs	$1346 - $3969	$1479
Mid-end stay costs	$42 per night at an MTDC	$117 per night in a chalet
Camera charges/ taxes	Many parks charge a small camera fee.	No camera fees.
Mobile phones	Disallowed in parks like Tadoba.	No restrictions.
Possibility of self-driving	No!	Most common option.
Facilitated sightings	Only high-end resorts like Jungle Lodges and Pugdundee Safaris have sighting boards.	Sighting boards at rest camps and picnic sites. The Latest Sightings app in South and Central Kruger.
Zone restrictions	Stick to the zone you’ve booked or pay the premium for full-day permits.	Go wherever you want
Time restrictions	Three-hour game drives or full-day drives if you pay the premium.	Feel free to be out all day if you like. Your choice.
Route restrictions	At the whims of the forest department.	None, except service roads that are only for park staff.
Speed restrictions	20 kmph	40 kmph on gravel 50 kmph on tar
Tourist facilities	In most cases, none. If they exist, they’re usually of poor quality, similar to the ones at the Bandhavgarh and Kanha centre points. In-park accommodations are scarce and hard to book.	Picnic sites, restaurants, coffee shops, filling stations, gift shops, in-park accommodations, etc.
Food restrictions	Most often vegetarian food and no alcohol.	Eat what you want - no restrictions. Alcohol is disallowed only in public areas, so day visitors can’t bring in alcohol.

Writing all this stings. I wish Indian parks could be the first place I’d visit or send a fellow photographer. Seeing a tiger is still magic, every single time. But when I only get a handful of holidays each year, I want stress-free adventure and kindness, not bureaucracy and snubs. For a quick escape, maybe I’ll brave the mess at home. But for a longish break, I’ll probably head to another country instead.

I’m sure someone will tell me, “Not all parks are the same.” True! India has great spots, and Africa has expensive ones too. I’m not pretending this is a scientific study — just sharing ten years’ worth of real experiences as an obsessed wildlife photographer.

That said, the broad point still holds. If you can afford it, big game parks in Africa provide far greater value and enjoyment to the average tourist than their equivalents in India.

Is there a way out of this conundrum, though? Sure, there is, but it’ll take several layers of tourism reform and a complete mindset change on the part of forest departments and the government at large. That’s a story for a future article. For now, I’d love to know what you think. Have you been to both African and Indian parks? How do the experiences compare for you?

Wildlife tourism - why Africa gets my custom and India gets my sighs