In 2003, a tigress fought a 14-foot crocodile in a Rajasthan lake, and won. That fight, caught on camera, made her one of the most photographed tigers on Earth, and made Ranthambore a household name.
MCQ QuestionsIndGeo0091
Ranthambore National Park
From a maharaja’s hunting ground to one of India’s best-known tiger reserves, home of the tigress Machli.
1955
Sawai Madhopur Game Sanctuary
A 282 sq km sanctuary is set up on the former hunting grounds of Jaipur’s maharajas.
1973
Declared a Project Tiger reserve
Ranthambore becomes one of India’s original nine tiger reserves under the new Project Tiger scheme.
1980
Declared a national park
The core zone gains full national park status, its highest level of legal protection.
2003
Machli’s crocodile fight goes viral
Tigress Machli fights and kills a 14-foot crocodile at Padam Talao, filmed by tourists, turning her into a global icon.
Scale check: The full tiger reserve covers about 1,334 sq km. The strictly protected core, the national park itself, is a smaller slice of roughly 275 sq km inside it.
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Must Know
- Ranthambore National Park lies in Sawai Madhopur district, Rajasthan. The Banas River borders it to the north, the Chambal River to the south.
- It began life as the Sawai Madhopur Game Sanctuary in 1955, on land once used as a hunting ground by the maharajas of Jaipur.
- It became one of India’s original nine Project Tiger reserves in 1973, and was declared a full national park in 1980.
- The tiger reserve today covers about 1,334 sq km, including a strictly protected core zone of roughly 275 sq km.
- As per the 2022 forest department census, the core held 69 tigers. Wider 2026 estimates put the number above 80, but that figure spans the whole landscape, including buffer zones and corridors, not just the core.
- The park’s most famous resident was a tigress named Machli, also known as T-16. In 2003, tourists filmed her fighting and killing a 14-foot crocodile at Padam Talao, and the footage went viral.
Good to Know
- Machli became known as the “Queen of Ranthambore.” She lived to about nineteen years old, an exceptional age for a wild tiger, and died in August 2016.
- She is widely considered the most photographed tiger in the world. Her fame drew large numbers of tourists to the park for over a decade.
- The park’s vegetation is mostly dry deciduous forest and open grassy meadows. It holds over 300 tree species, more than 100 of them medicinal.
- Besides tigers, the park hosts leopards, sloth bears, chital, sambar deer, jackals, and langurs. It also records over 270 bird species, including peafowl and several eagle species.
- Cheetahs from the nearby Kuno National Park have occasionally wandered into the Ranthambore landscape, though they are not a resident species here.
- Padam Talao, the park’s largest lake, sits beside the historic Jogi Mahal, a former royal rest house.
Test Yourself
Great to Know
- Ranthambore Fort sits inside the park, atop a 700-foot hill. Rajput king Sapaldaksha of the Chauhan dynasty founded it in the mid-10th century.
- In 2013, UNESCO added the fort to its World Heritage list, as part of the “Hill Forts of Rajasthan” group. This status belongs to the fort itself, not to the wider tiger reserve.
- Ranthambore’s tigers descend from a small founding population, and the reserve is largely isolated from other tiger habitats. Conservationists have flagged this as a genetic bottleneck risk, distinct from the population-count success story the numbers alone suggest.
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