Kanha Tiger Reserve, India

Outpost 12

Price per night from$534.59

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (inclusive of taxes and fees) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (INR50,858.00), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Outpost 12 Photos

Style

Learn your stripes

Setting

Big cats' cradle

Explore

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The safari extends well beyond the backseat of your 4x4 at Outpost 12. Tiger territory spills into every part of this jungle storybook lodge, run by naturalists keen to share their encyclopaedic knowledge of Kanha National Park. Reclaimed stone cottages blend into the canopy, meals migrate from bush breakfasts to riverbanks, and spa treatments borrow from local botanicals. After dark, wildlife continues to wander through camp, and telescopes and binoculars train on star-blanketed skies.

Smith Extra

Get this when you book through us:

A 30-minute foot massage each at Ilika Spa

Facilities

Photos Outpost 12 facilities

Need to know

Rooms

Nine cottages.

Check–Out

Noon, and check-in is at 2pm. Both are flexible, on request and subject to availability.

More details

Rates include a generous breakfast spread (Indian, Continental, English and American options are all available) set up bush-style so you never eat in the same place twice, plus brunch, lunch, high tea and dinner. Outpost 12 has a two-night minimum stay.

Also

There are ramps throughout the property and buggies on speed dial, but no specially adapted rooms if you have limited mobility.

Please note

Game drives are not included in the room rate and must be booked in advance.

At the hotel

Bird hides, nature trails, telescopes-to-borrow, boutique, indoor and outdoor lounges, complimentary laundry service (two items a day each; after this, it’s charged) and free WiFi throughout. In rooms: air-conditioning, coffee machine, tea-making kit, minibar, free bottled water, insect repellent, sunscreen, torch, bathrobes, slippers and Indian Apothecary bath products.

Our favourite rooms

All nine cottages are identical, so your decision comes down to the view: two look out over the Banjar River, and the remaining seven are tucked among the trees. Expect lofty, light-filled interiors with teak furniture to lounge on, Baiga-crafted artwork to admire, outdoor soaking tubs and generous decks where birdwatching often rivals what you’ll see out and about. They’re deliberately screen-free, so you can save your eyes for safari.

Poolside

The outdoor infinity pool is an inviting spot to cool off between game drives, overlooking the river and surrounding forest. Keep your binoculars close even when you’re off safari: you never know what might wander, swoop or flutter into view.

Spa

Ilia Spa looks to the forest for wellness inspiration, blending Ayurvedic therapies with local ingredients. There are Baiga-inspired body exfoliations, made with rice grown nearby, turmeric, fresh yoghurt and honey collected by the Baiga community, mineral-rich Kanheri clay wraps and a scented bath ritual, where five litres of herbal tea infused with your pick of lemongrass, wild ginger, tulsi or kaffir lime are brewed into a deeply aromatic blend. Forest bathing, riverside healing walks and sound baths take sessions outside the treatment rooms, too.

Packing tips

Bring a good bird guide. Tigers may steal the headlines, but Kanha’s winged inhabitants deserve just as much attention, with daily birding walks at dawn and dusk.

Also

The wildlife keeps coming to you: the lobby has a live camera feed, and the boutique displays camera-trap shots of wild boar, jungle cats, otters and jackals. There’s also a printer for your own safari snaps.

Pet‐friendly

Dogs are welcome in all cottages for a fee of INR5,000 (each pet, a night). You’ll need to bring up-to-date vaccination records, keep pups leashed outdoors, and don’t leave them unattended (they can join you in designated outdoor dining areas). See more pet-friendly hotels in Kanha Tiger Reserve.

Children

All ages are welcome (under-fives stay for free), but Outpost 12 is best suited to wildlife-loving families with older children as animals roam freely through the grounds. Cribs and rollaways can be added to your cottage on request (sleeping up to four).

Sustainability efforts

Outpost 12 was dreamt up by two passionate naturalists, and conservation shapes everything from the ground up. Sitting on the edge of Kanha National Park, the lodge was designed to deepen your understanding of one of India’s richest ecosystems through expert-led wildlife experiences, with cottages built using granite overburden reclaimed from the nearby Malanjkhand copper mine, giving discarded stone a second life. It runs on solar power with battery storage, recycles wastewater through a biodigester to replenish its ponds, uses LED lighting throughout and vegan bath products. Less than 10 per cent of the site has been built on, leaving the rest to rewild.

Food and Drink

Photos Outpost 12 food and drink

Top Table

Reserve the starbed deck for dinner. It’s high above the treetops, making it an idyllic spot for sunset, stargazing and the sounds of the jungle after dark.

Dress Code

Fresh from the 4x4 is perfectly presentable.

Hotel restaurant

Dining at Outpost 12 is a movable feast, with the menu changing almost as often as the setting. One meal might be a packed safari breakfast of buttery muffins from the in-house pastry chef, the next a lantern-lit dinner beside the Banjar River with sundowners on the sandbank. It’s all dished out from Maikal, the lodge’s main restaurant that’s named after the mountain range that rings the national park. Foraged ingredients, forest greens and produce from nearby farms find their way onto your plate, alongside central Indian and international favourites.

Hotel bar

Brander’s 12 is where the day’s tiger tales are swapped over jungle-inspired cocktails, concocted with just-picked botanicals and local spirits including mahua (which adds a floral kick). This watering hole is named after the pioneering forester and naturalist AA Dunbar Brander, who spent much of his career documenting Kanha’s wildlife. As you sip, it’s worth leafing through a copy of Wild Animals in Central India, penned by Brander in 1923.

Last orders

Breakfast is from 7am, brunch from 11am, lunch from 1.30pm, afternoon tea from 4pm and dinner from 7pm.

Room service

Dine in your cottage or on your deck around the clock, just don’t leave any leftovers out that might attract unwanted guests.

Location

Photos Outpost 12 location
Address
Outpost 12
Kanha National Park 171/2
Tilari Village
481768
India

On the fringes of Kanha National Park in central India, Outpost 12 is surrounded by sal forest and open grasslands, with the park’s famed tiger habitat just beyond.

Planes

Jabalpur Airport is the closest, around 80 miles (roughly three hours by road) from the hotel; Raipur and Nagpur are both around 160 miles away. Private transfers can be arranged on request, with prices depending on the distance. Jabalpur has direct flights from Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and other major Indian hubs, making it the easiest gateway for most international travellers (you’ll usually connect via Delhi or Mumbai).

Trains

Jabalpur railway station is also around three hours’ drive from the hotel, and has direct connections to Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.

Automobiles

You won’t need a car unless you’re planning to explore Madhya Pradesh beyond the national park; the hotel can arrange transfers, and safaris take place in dedicated park vehicles. If you do drive, there’s free valet parking on site.

Worth getting out of bed for

At Outpost 12, almost everything revolves around Kanha National Park. The lodge’s resident naturalists lead morning and afternoon game drives (plus intermittent night drives) in search of Royal Bengal tigers, leopards, sloth bears, dholes, gaur and the park’s remarkable birdlife such as racket-tailed drongos and crested serpent eagles, revealing the delicate balance between the sal forests, open grasslands and the wildlife that depends on them.  

Between safaris, you can slow the pace with guided birdwatching, nature walks and village visits with members of the local Baiga community. When darkness falls, swap tiger tracks for constellations at the on-site observatory, kitted out with telescopes for stargazing and a starbed for jungle sleep-outs. 

Local restaurants

You’ll be staying on a full-board basis at Outpost 12, with breakfast, lunch, high tea and dinner included in the rate, so there’s little reason to venture elsewhere. 

Reviews

Photos Outpost 12 reviews

Anonymous review

By Mr & Mrs Smith

Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this naturalist-founded lodge by Kanha National Park and unpacked their binoculars and safari logs scrawled with sightings, a full account of their wildlife-watching break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Outpost 12 in India… 

In Madhya Pradesh’s ‘Tiger Land of India’, where safari lodges often compete to promise the biggest sightings, Outpost 12 takes a different view. Childhood friends Durgesh ‘DK’ Singh and Sunny Saxena bonded over computer science textbooks before their careers split: Singh became one of Kanha’s most respected naturalists, and Saxena eventually traded tech for tiger country. Years later, they reunited to create the kind of lodge they felt the region was missing — one where curiosity counts more than a big cat checklist. 

You’ll still search for Royal Bengal tigers, of course, but you’ll also learn why the barasingha (rare swamp deer) became a conservation success story, how the Baiga have read these forests for generations and why a flash of white from an Indian paradise flycatcher can be every bit as thrilling. Downtime can be dedicated to clay body wraps, soaking up the jungle soundtrack from your outdoor tub or settling into one of the bird hides with a ginger-infused brew. 

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Price per night from $534.59