A Journey to India

I never thought a trip to another country would have the power to actually change my life. I thought that was just something people claimed to happen to them, and then their life went back to being the same again a few weeks after they returned home. My trip to India proved me wrong.

In my sophomore year in college at Clemson University I had the privilege to travel to India during spring break through a class called Biodiversity and Conservation in India. In India I would have the opportunity to learn about and see the wildlife there firsthand, and hopefully – hopefully – see at least one of the remaining 3,200 tigers remaining in the wild.

At the beginning of that year I had joined Clemson’s Tigers for Tigers organization as a Philanthropy Officer, having a passion for wildlife, although my life plan was to study neuroscience and potentially become a neurosurgeon. I never expected a little one-and-a-half week trip to India would change that for me.

My imagination never could have prepared me for what happened while I was in India. We were riding in a Jeep through the forest when we saw it. A tiger. She was just lying in the road in front of us like we didn’t even exist as the Jeep pulled slowly up until we were what had to be no more than 15 feet away. We must have watched her there for only a few minutes, but it felt like an eternity. The sheer size and power she embodied were unequivocal. At one point she looked right at us, staring. Relaxed, not terrified of us, of us who are destroying her land, her future, but also of us, who are doing all we can to help, doing all we can to give her a future. All I could think was how incredible this moment was; how absolutely once-in-a-lifetime it was.

From that moment on I knew I was not here to study neuroscience. I knew I was here to fight for conservation.

So I came back, fighting with full-fledge passion for tigers through Tigers for Tigers, becoming Vice President and helping to begin the National Tigers for Tigers Coalition and host its first annual summit, whose sole mission is to improve the status of tigers through the collaboration of students at tiger-mascot schools across the nation.

My trip to India changed my life path. You just can’t look into the eyes of a tiger in the wild and not expect your life to change.

Carmony Adler, 

Clemson Alumna 2013

Former Clemson T4T Vice President

India Spring Trip - 2011