Before there was a Corbett Tiger Reserve, there was Jim Corbett — a hunter and naturalist in colonial-era Kumaon, best known for tracking down man-eating tigers and leopards that had been terrorising villages across the region.
What makes Corbett's story unusual is the turn it took later in life. The same man who spent years hunting dangerous animals became one of India's earliest and most persuasive voices for wildlife conservation, campaigning to protect the same forests and species he once hunted. His book 'Man-Eaters of Kumaon' remains a classic of the genre, and his later writing leaned increasingly toward conservation.
Kaladhungi was Corbett's winter home for much of his life. The house he lived in, at nearby Chhoti Haldwani, still stands today and has been preserved as a museum — photographs, personal artefacts, and a picture of the rural Kumaon he knew.
In 1957, a few years after India's independence, the national park was renamed Corbett National Park in his honour, making it the country's first national park to carry a name at all. Today it's more formally Corbett Tiger Reserve, but the connection to Kaladhungi — the village where he actually lived — remains one of the more overlooked parts of the story.
For visitors, the museum is a quiet stop, but a meaningful one: it's the rare chance to see the human history behind a park most people visit purely for its wildlife.