Kanha's sal and bamboo forests, rolling grasslands and meandering streams stretch over 940 sq km in dramatic natural splendour which form the core of the Kanha Tiger Reserve created in 1974 under Project Tiger. The park is the only habitat of the rare hardground Barasingha (Cervus Duvaceli Branderi).

This is original Kipling country of which he wrote so vividly in his Jungle Book. The same abundance of wild life species exists today in Kanha National Park, as it must have when Kipling roamed these parts.