When cars were still rare, two US women decided to experience India from behind the wheel

In 1904, Margarita Grace Phipps and her husband John ‘Jay’ Schaffer Phipps were spending their unusual honeymoon in India, driving through the country, camping in the wilderness, when they encountered a tiger.

The scene is described in an article in The New York Times on March 20, 1904. As the couple waited in their luxury sedan and the “native helpers” set up camp, “there came out of the bushes some distance ahead, the cry of a wild animal, which to them was a strange sound… Before they had time to ask any of the natives, these came running of their own accord to warn them that one of the big cats of the jungle could not be far away.”

Jay directed every man to load his rifle but then “gallantly ordered that the first shot at the tiger should belong to his wife since she was very anxious to achieve the honor of having slain one of the most feared of animals”.

“In another moment the animal stepped out in the open,” read the article. “He was a superb figure, though still young and not full grown. Mrs. Phipps raised her rifle just as the tiger turned his head toward her. She aimed but a second and then...

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