Post Description

India is a land where the natural world has been woven into people’s lives, a place where you can see animals that exist nowhere else on earth and where wilderness still holds strong. Wildlife expert Liz Bonnin, actor Freida Pinto and mountaineer Jon Gupta reveal the wonders of India’s natural world.
In this first episode, Liz visits the Gir Forest, home to the world’s last Asiatic Lions, and witnesses two females hunting. Freida meets a man who has dedicated his life to the Hoolock Gibbon - India’s only ape - which greets the morning by singing.

Jon climbs high into the Himalayas and stops off at Devprayag to bathe in the sacred waters at this holy place where the river Ganges begins.

The mountains of the south are carpeted in tea but they are also home to the largest of India’s land mammals, the Asian Elephant. Liz has the opportunity to see the unique sight of elephants walking through a tea plantation and hears how the local people are helping elephants and the plantations to live alongside each other. Freida has always wanted to meet a baby elephant and is left speechless when one reaches out with its trunk to take her hand.

Liz gets the chance to see for the first time the beguiling way south India celebrates the spirit of the Tiger; The Puli Kali or Tiger Dance is a unique performance where it seems that the bigger the belly, the better the tiger.

Also in the programme, the Himalayas hide a valley of flowers. Freida visits a land she learnt about at school where it rains nearly every day, and she stands on a bridge, grown using the living roots of trees. Liz visits a Hornbill nest to see how a couple protects its young and to hear one of the most magical sounds of the rainforest - the beating of the male Hornbill’s wings.