Shere Khan could well have prowled Ranthambore: Kipling wrote much of The Jungle Book with the forests of Rajputana in mind, before settling on Seoni, in what’s now Madhya Pradesh, as the story’s location. While Kipling and his contemporaries would have been more likely to take their rifles hunting for tigers in Rajasthan, the only thing we’ll use for shooting while bombing around the jungle in a big jeep is a long-lens camera.

Ranthambore is meant to be one of the best places in the world to see tigers, but the chances you’ll see one on safari are still fairly slim – about one in four. But we’re lucky: a trail of paw prints and the warning calls of a peacock and some langur monkeys lead us straight to one within 45 minutes. What starts off as an orange blob about 100 metres away lazily pads towards us through the long grass.

The young female stalks through trees, stops to spray against one, then walks across the track towards us, an adrenaline-triggering three metres from the jeep. The beautiful predator settles on the other side of the track, and sits with her back to us for at least 10 minutes, before walking off into the trees, tiger hips and tail swinging nonchalantly.