📷 The Sal Forest Road — Jim Corbett, Uttarakhand · 29 May 2026
A photograph and a story, every morning
The Sal Forest Road
Jim Corbett, Uttarakhand · landscape
A dirt track curves through tall sal trees, the canopy closing overhead. The kind of road you slow down on without being asked.
Sal forests have a quiet that's particular to them. The trees are tall and straight, the canopy is generally too high to feel oppressive, and the understorey is sparse — so light reaches the floor in slanting columns, and sound travels further than you expect. Tigers move through this kind of forest without being seen, even by experienced trackers. You're never quite sure who's watching whom.
This stretch was on the road into a reserve, in the buffer zone where vehicles still ran but the forest had taken over the verges. The track curved away under the trees, the dust of the last jeep already settled. I stopped, got out, took the photograph standing in the middle of the road. Nothing came in either direction for the ten minutes I was there. Sal forests will give you those ten minutes if you take them slowly.