Can now recommend several books about India but one in particular is Jim Corbett's Man-Eaters of the Kumaon - sounds a little melodramatic don't you think? Corbett was a famous big game hunter in northern India in the twenties and thirties and by virtue of his skill and knowledge was able to free a number of villages from the tyranny of man-eating tigers.  I gather that not a few parks and schools have been named after him. If you read his book about his experiences you come away with the sense that the man does not have a personal life which I don't believe was at all true.  The book is all about hunting tigers, the physical endurance and the mental games they play with each other.  As Corbett makes clear, one never knows who was the hunter and who was the hunted until the final kill.

He grabs you like this: "A man-eating tiger is a tiger that has been compelled, through stress of circumstances beyond its control, to adopt a diet alien to it...Human beings are not the natural prey of tigers, and it is only when tigers have been incapacitated through wounds or old age that, in order to live, they are compelled to take a diet of human flesh".

Not your average Sahib! He respects his quarry enormously and has made a great study of him or, in many cases, her - likely one of the reasons he was such a successful hunter.

This book is weighted by paternalism of the Raj but still a great read by a guy who knows his stuff! Out of print but available on line and used.