BBC TIGER ISLAND: We Slept on the Same Island. Tracked the Same Cubs. With the Same Guide.

Stephan Cabibel
Jun 28
3 min read

We watched the BBC's new tiger film and recognised the place, the camp, and one of the people on screen. Here is the real story behind Tiger Island — and how you can stand where the cameras stood.

We slept on the same island. We tracked the same cubs. We walked in with the same guide.

We have been holding this story for almost a year, waiting for the right moment to tell it. That moment arrived in June, when the BBC released it to the world.

Tiger Island is a two-part film from the BBC Studios Natural History Unit — the team behind Planet Earth and Asia — and it premiered on BBC One and iPlayer on 7 June 2026. It was shot deep in western Nepal, on a small river island inside a community forest that holds one of the highest densities of wild tigers anywhere on Earth.

When we watched it, we knew the place. The camp. And one of the people leading the crew through the forest.

Because the guide who tracks those tigers on screen is the same guide who tracked them with us.

We were there the same season

Here is the part that still gives us goosebumps. We were on that island the same season the crew was filming. We stayed at the same camp. And we set off into the forest with Sushila Mahatara — the local naturalist you see leading the BBC team across the screen.

The crew packed up, and a little while later it was our turn. Five days. Same island, same guide, same task: find the cubs.

Sushila and Roxy, the morning we set out — now a familiar face to millions of BBC viewers.

youtube.com/watch?v=TQFXaoT8QWo&time_continue=9&source_ve_path=NzY3NTg&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.discoverwildlife.com%2F&embeds_referring_origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.discoverwildlife.com

The two mothers at the heart of it all

The film hangs on something rare. Tigers are meant to be solitary. They are not supposed to share. But on this island, the crew filmed two mothers — Goma and Jugini — raising five cubs between them, watching over and caring for each other's young.

Scientists call it alloparenting, and it had never been recorded in wild tigers before. It is the kind of behaviour that rewrites a paragraph in the textbook, and the crew became completely caught up in it, in the slow, anxious, hopeful business of watching mothers raise cubs in a place full of danger.

We know exactly how that feels. A short while later, Sushila was walking us along the same riverbanks, reading the same pug marks, telling us where the family had been seen days before. Tracking, waiting, holding our breath at every alarm call. Five days of it.

We won't say whether we found them. We will say the BBC's drones got a far better view than we did.

Burhand Wilderness Camp - Drone Image - Where we stayed back in 2025 during our Visit in Bardiya

The camp the crew called home

Home base for all of this is a small wilderness camp sitting right on the island — the same camp the crew lived in while they filmed. It was named one of TIME's World's Greatest Places in 2024, and after five days there we understood why: a dozen tents and a treehouse suite, lantern-lit dinners, the Karnali River a few steps away, and the sound of the forest waking up at dawn.

It is run by conservationists, on land that was protected rather than developed, and a share of every stay goes back into the corridor and the community. You don't check into a room here so much as move, briefly and carefully, into the wild.

This is the part we quietly do at Roxy's Travel Plan. Not the postcard version — the real thing, with the people who actually know the ground.

You can stand exactly where the cameras stood

When people picture Nepal, they think of mountains and trekking. They don't picture this: wild tigers, a river island, a camp out of a wildlife film. But it is all there, and we can put you in the middle of it:

The same island the BBC filmed on
The same camp the crew stayed in
The same guide leading your search

It is not a guaranteed sighting — nothing in the wild ever is, and we would never promise one. What we can promise is that you'll be in the right place, with the right people, planned properly from the first idea to the last transfer.

First, though, watch the film. It's on BBC One and iPlayer now. Watch it, fall for those cubs the way we did, and then come and find us.

BBC Tiger Island Link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002x3bv