It was his love for nature and wildlife that led Aditya Singh to quit his Indian civil services job, leave his well-appointed house in Delhi and settle in a remote corner of Rajasthan, abutting the famous Ranthambore Tiger Reserve, in 1998. Over the last 20 years, Singh has been buying tracts of land adjacent to Ranthambore and simply letting the forest grow back.
After shifting to Sawai Madhopur, a small city near Ranthambore tiger reserve (RTR), Singh took up photography. His wife Poonam Singh and he opened a tourist resort there to earn their living. Unlike many tourism establishments that want unrestricted access to the wild areas, they slowly started buying land parcels adjacent to each other just outside RTR’s boundary. This area is known as Bhadlav—and they now own about 35 acres of land there, with another five acres a few hundred meters away and a strip of land connecting the two.
The simple act of buying land and letting it grow wildly instead of farming it has yielded incredible results. In an aerial shot he had captured, Singh points to their land parcel—a lush green expanse compared to the barren land of the Ranthambore tiger reserve with which his landholding shares the boundary.
He has also created several water holes in the landholding to ensure that the wild animals get water even during summers. As a result, the pressure of predators like tigers from RTR venturing into fields of farmers has gone down.
The Singhs are not done with this dream of creating a lush oasis within Rajasthan. Singh says he wants to buy more land adjacent to his fields, especially the agriculture field next to his land and inspire others in the area to follow suit.
