There are places you go to tick off a list, and then there are places that quietly undo that instinct altogether. Similipal National Park belongs firmly to the latter. You don’t arrive in Similipal with a checklist. You arrive, and the checklist slowly leaves you. The first encounter is not dramatic. It does not announce itself. The road in feels unassuming, the forest revealing itself in fragments rather than spectacle. But gradually, something begins to shift. The air cools