The latest movie adaption of The Jungle Book is out now, bringing Rudyard Kipling’s classic tale of exotic India to life in a new and fresh way. Rudyard Kipling was born 150 years ago in Mumbai (then Bombay) and his most famous work was inspired by India’s beautiful natural environment.
Sadly, it has been significantly eroded since the real Jungle Book was published at the end of the 19th century. His tale of Mowgli the boy-child who is adopted by wolves and grows up learning the law of the jungle is a beloved classic.
Kipling and India
Kipling actually wrote The Jungle Book sitting at his desk in Vermont, but of course, it was based on his experience of living in India and his strong connection to that country. Kipling was born in Bombay to an Anglo-Indian family.
After going to school in England, returned to India when he was 16 years old and spent the best part of ten years in India and Pakistan as a journalist. India remained a part of him all his life and complex conflicts of identity were a strong theme in his writing, not least in Mowgli, who is torn between the world of the jungle and the world of man:
“Thou art of the Jungle and not of the Jungle. And I am only a black panther. But I love thee, Little Brother.” — Bagheera, The Jungle Book
Kipling described his childhood in Bombay, where “in the afternoon heats before we took our sleep” the childrens’ ayah (or nanny) or Meeta (the Hindu bearer, or male attendant) would tell them “stories and Indian nursery songs all unforgotten…” He wrote that he thought and dreamed in Hindi but then had to haltingly speak English to his parents at dinner.
Where is the Real Jungle Book Set?
Initially, Kipling set the Jungle Book in an area of Rajasthan that he knew well but later decided to move the location to an area of India’s Central Provinces.
“It was seven o’clock of a very warm evening among the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day’s rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips.” — The Jungle Book
Seoni is a small town in what is now the state of Madhya Pradesh. Kipling never visited this area himself but he had friends who had gone there on vacation and he saw their photographs. He also used reference books to achieve realistic descriptions of India’s natural world.
But Kipling was more than anything else writing fiction. The luminous prose of his Jungle Book created a 19th-century fairytale that rests in all our minds if we have read it as youngsters.
Discovering the Real Jungle Book in India
The world of the real Jungle Book can still be experienced, in some of India’s famous national parks. The species nature-loving visitors to India most want to see of course is the tiger. Mowgli’s powerful antagonist, Shere Khan is a cruel Bengal tiger, who fears only guns and fire.
This magnificent, highly endangered species faces ongoing habitat destruction and poaching. Just under half of the world’s remaining wild tiger population is to be found in India but the 1,400 tigers are spread thinly, over more than 40 national parks across the country.
Here are five incredible places in India where you can experience the real Jungle Book:
The Setting for the Real Jungle Book in Pench National Park
Pench National Park is closest to the actual town mentioned in the Jungle Book, Seoni, so this 300-square-kilometer park is the place that can truly claim to be the original setting of the real Jungle Book. The heart of the park is the Mowgli Pench Sanctuary, with damp valleys and rolling hills covered with dry deciduous forest. Pench has a wide range of plants and animals, including good populations of Chital and Sambar deer.
As well as tigers and deer, you may see wild boar, lots of beautiful birds such