Two parks in Uttarakhand. Jim Corbett National Park has 16 tickets and tours to book; Rajaji National Park has 3 tickets and tours to book. The table and the two notes below put them side by side; the full pages have what to see, the ticket and the timing for each.
Corbett is India's oldest tiger reserve, five to six hours from Delhi in the Himalayan foothills of Uttarakhand, and it is sold from the capital as two- and three-day packages with the transport, a resort at Ramnagar or along the Kosi river and the safaris included, or as the wildlife stop on the Golden Triangle circuit after Agra and Jaipur. The safaris themselves are the thing to understand: the park is divided into zones, Bijrani, Jhirna, Dhela, Garjia, Durga Devi and the core Dhikala, and each jeep safari of three to four hours in the morning or the afternoon is booked online through the forest department for a named zone with a permit, a jeep and a guide, weeks ahead in the season, since the permits are limited and sell out;
Rajaji is the tiger reserve that lies on the doorstep of the holy towns of Haridwar and Rishikesh, in the foothills of the Himalaya in the Indian state of Uttarakhand, about five to six hours by road or four and a half by the fast trains from Delhi, and for the great numbers of travellers who come to Rishikesh for yoga, rafting and the Ganges, it offers a wildlife safari within half an hour of their guesthouse. The park has several gates and ranges, of which the one that matters to visitors is Chilla, on the eastern bank of the Ganges, nine kilometres from Haridwar and about eighteen from Rishikesh, which has the best track network, the most water and the most animals; Motichur and Ranipur, on the western side near Haridwar, and Mohand and Asarori, near Dehradun, are the alternatives.
