Jim Corbett Omnibus: "Man-eaters of Kumaon", "Man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag" and "Temple Tiger and More Man-eaters of Kumaon" [Englisch] [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Jim Corbett underwent a remarkable development. From the "sportive" rifle-man to a conservator of wildlife! This book comprises a selection of his adventures as a relentless hunter of man-eating tigers and panthers and saviour of whole village communities. His former house in Naini Tal has been in a deplorable condition, the last time I saw it. It seems as if the memory of a man who saved the lives of thousands of people in the region of Kumaon, by cleansing the environment from the insatiable, mischievous man-eaters should fade away.
In the literature his name lives on in fact. Corbett, an anglo-indian, who spent most of his life in Northern India, when India was a part of the Empire, had to leave his homeland out of health problems. He did not survive this very long. The mountains and jungles in the North of India were exchanged by the mountains and grassy slopes of Kenya, whereas the people could not be exchanged. He missed the Kumaonis, his people, of who he had become one himself. They were like him a peculiar human breed.
The one who travels today into that region which was Corbetts hunting grounds, Rudraprayag, Almora, Naini Tal, will state that there are only a few natural retreats for wildlife. Only in the Jim Corbett National Park are vast tracks of forests preserved and further away in the high mountain area. Instead the stream of pilgrims, interrupted for some time when the panther of Rudraprayag had his high time, is stronger than ever. They are travelling most of the time in busses. The paths which Corbett used can still be trekked. Notwithstanding Kumaon is refreshing free of the tourist streams that abound in neighbouring Nepal.

Jim Corbett was no proper writer. He had to be persuaded to write down his stories, he, who was in reality no friend of big or many words. This succeeded very well, so well that one thinks to have been put in his place sometimes when he is relating events. The time runs back and one sees oneself sitting on a "machan", on which a tired hunter is still waiting in the early morning after a long night for the beast to pass by, the beast that scared to fright and terror the whole region. One is rushing with him on paths, across thorny bush, over mountain brooks and slopes to the villages where fate has again cruelly stroke. One is crouching with him, with the same impatience, in a sticky hut of the aborigines and resists in the cold of the night to raise, lurking on every sound: is this what is heard beside the whimper of the child a scraping at the door? Stems the touch at the toe from a rat or a cat`s paw?
This all is thrillingly written. There are still accidents between Tigers and mainly leopards even today, but then the police will come with automatic gunnery to find the potential disturber.
Yet, everybody who travels in this area and stays out in the open at night, deems sometimes to scent something of a gun smoke of old times and to hear sounds he should better miss to hear.