Amid sleeping tigers and poaching threats, women forest guards patrol Kaziranga

On a chilly autumn morning in October 2023, a grey dawn crept slowly across the sky. A sudden murmuring sound outside their camp awoke Priyanka Bharali from an already inadequate sleep. From a distance, she could hear the faint sounds of petrified langurs. She cautiously opened the door of their room, without interrupting the slumber of her roommates who had all gone to bed very late and exhausted the previous night, after frantically attending a false call about a rhino poaching threat.

Bharali then saw two tigers atop the highland adjacent to their camp in the faint morning light. They had probably spent the night sleeping there. “This is what living in a jungle looks like,” shares Bharali, 23, from Garbhaga, a village in the Sivsagar district of Assam. Bharali joined Kaziranga National Park as one of the female frontline forest staff entrusted with the role of safeguarding the Park’s biodiversity.

“The selection process was rigorous, but I was ready to face all the hurdles,” Mitali Boruah, 27, another forest guard tells Mongabay India. When Boruah saw the advertisement for women forest guards job, she jumped at the opportunity as she had always wanted to remain close to nature.

Rashmi Borah, 27, says she never imagined that...

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