Mukundpur

• 1. Introduction

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  Mukundpur is a village tucked into Amarpatan tehsil, in the Maihar district of Madhya Pradesh, India. Its name appears on no famous map and belongs to no celebrated dynasty. Yet in 1951, the jungles surrounding this village became the setting for one of the most remarkable wildlife encounters of the twentieth century. The Maharaja of Rewa, Martand Singh, was hunting in this region when he spotted a tiger unlike any seen before: white. That single sighting set off a chain of events that would draw wildlife enthusiasts to Mukundpur for decades. The question the rest of this documentary will answer is what happened after that moment, and what Mukundpur eventually became in its wake.

• 2. The Maharaja's Discovery

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  Martand Singh, the Maharaja of Rewa, was the man who encountered the white tiger in 1951 in the region around Mukundpur. White tigers are not a separate species. They carry a rare genetic trait that strips away the orange pigment, leaving pale fur with dark stripes. For a king to lay eyes on one in the wild was extraordinary. The encounter placed Mukundpur on a very short list of locations tied to one of nature's rarest sightings. Martand Singh's name would be attached to this region's wildlife legacy for the rest of the century and well beyond it.

• 3. The Safari Inaugurated

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  On the 3rd of April 2016, a formal tribute to that 1951 discovery opened in the jungles of Mukundpur. The facility carries a long official name: the World's First White Tiger Safari Maharaja Martan Singh Judeo White Tiger Safari And Zoo. Its purpose was explicitly commemorative, built to honour the Maharaja's original sighting. The choice of Mukundpur as the location was deliberate. The safari sits in the same landscape where the white tiger was first spotted, giving the site a direct geographical connection to the event it memorialises. The inauguration in 2016 marked the first time a dedicated white tiger safari of this kind had been established anywhere in the world.