Imagine encountering a steely one-horned rhinoceros on your evening walk in the park. Pobitora, a small wildlife sanctuary in Northeast India, on the floodplains of the grand Brahmaputra, provides the opportunity in spades. The grey ‘unicorns’, grazing so casually, are found in every nook and corner here, making it hard to reconcile to the fact that there’s less than 4,000 of them left in the wild. There’s a mother with a calf who snorts at us angrily, raising her heavy, one-horned nose in the air as trigger-happy photographers surround her.

A few kilometres ahead, we spot a male rhino with some bruise marks on its armour plates, the result, perhaps, of a fight for territory. The Pobitora Wildlife Sanctuary is no bigger than 39 square kilometres, yet it is home to over 100 one-horned rhinos—and they’re jostling for space with wild buff aloes, barking deer, and over thousands of migratory . . .