It was a cold winter evening in the Lake District, and I was spending a few months with my parents before setting off on a ‘round the world’ trip in February 1997. After dinner we settled down around the TV in their cosey living room and found a wildlife documentary to watch together. I still remember vividly, a tiger walking out of the morning mist with a huge, ruined fort in the background and that was the first time I had heard about Ranthambore national park. One day later I changed b...