Reading Sunayan Sharma’s Wild Treasures and Adventures (Niyogi Books) feels quite like sitting around a bonfire, listening to stories about the electric life of a forester. Sharma has devoted four decades to his career in the Indian Forest Services. What one reads, then, are the jungle diary notes of the writer transformed into a compilation of 17 essays. This makes for a compelling read as the stories retain Sharma’s proximity to the encounters he writes about. They range from incidents of first sightings to poaching, timber smuggling, translocation of tigers to Sariska Tiger Reserve, learning about the culture of the original inhabitants of the forests, and being stopped by a mother elephant calling out to her missing calves.

Sambar at the waterhole in Sariska Tiger Reserve