Every White Tiger on Earth traces back its origin to this one Royal secret of Bandhavgarh, Madhya Pradesh

Life inside the palace was a mix of confinement and royal pampering, but Mohan was not an easy animal to tame. In his early months, the wild cub actually broke out of his enclosure at the Govindgarh Palace, sparking a frantic royal search until he was recaptured in the nearby Mukundpur woods. Over time, Mohan settled into his royal prison, recognizing the voice of Maharaja Martand Singh, who trekked nearly 20 kilometers almost every day just to visit his prize tiger. The Maharaja’s ultimate goal was to ensure Mohan’s rare white coat didn’t die with him. He first bred Mohan with a normal wild tigress named Begum, but nature refused to cooperate—three separate litters resulted in nothing but normal orange cubs. Realizing the white trait was a recessive gene, the palace resorted to a controversial breeding strategy, pairing Mohan with his own orange daughter, Radha, who carried the hidden white gene. The gamble worked, and in 1958, Radha gave birth to four perfectly white cubs, establishing the world’s very first captive line of white tigers.