The production team covered the breadth and depth of India, from the Himalayan mountains in the north to the reef-fringed islands of the Indian Ocean, to capture footage of the country's wild places and charismatic wildlife.

After a preview of scenes from the forthcoming programmes, the rest of this episode concentrates on the wildlife of India's central forests and grasslands, the stronghold of the Bengal tiger.

Other unusual behaviour filmed includes a golden jackal family defending their pups from a sloth bear and a peacock attacking a snake.

Traditional beliefs instilled a feeling of respect for wild animals, but this is now being eroded The second programme features the wildlife of India's sacred rivers, the Ganges and Brahmaputra.

Beginning at Devaprayag, the confluence of two tributaries which together give rise to the Ganges, Thapar explains how the fertility of the waters is dependent on the summer monsoon.

The rains bring a peak flow of 1 billion US gallons (3,800,000 m3) of water every second down the rivers, flooding the plains of northern India and Bangladesh with fertile silt.

The Bharatpur wetland sanctuary near the Taj Mahal is actually a man-made environment but is now a haven for hundreds of thousands of birds, including 2,000 pairs of painted storks which are filmed building nests, mating, incubating eggs and feeding their chicks.

Other animals shown are monitor lizards which prey on fallen eggs and chicks, fishing cats and endangered gharials, a fish-eating crocodile.

As the monsoon draws to a close, more birds arrive, including sarus cranes, filmed conducting their courtship dances, and millions of waterfowl.

The sacred rivers eventually flow into a vast delta at the Bay of Bengal, and here in the mangrove swamps of the Sundarbans, animals and people are adapted to the tidal conditions.

Opening the program at a traditional boatyard at Veraval in north-west India, Thapar travels down the Arabian Sea coast to the coral islands of Lakshadweep, encountering dolphins and a feeding whale shark along the way.

Spot-billed pelicans fly with fully laden beaks 40 km inland to the huge pelicanry at Nelapattu where 1,500 birds gather to raise their young.

Olive ridley turtles mate at sea and come ashore at Gahirmatha beach in their thousands, where Thapar watches the millions of hatchlings return to the water.

Fortunately the people of the desert look favourably on their wild neighbours, as demonstrated by the villagers of Khichan, who feed large flocks of demoiselle cranes over the winter.

Around a camp fire, the nocturnal inhabitants of the desert are filmed as they emerge from the sand: dung beetles, gerbils and predatory saw scaled vipers and scorpions.

At night, climbing perch leave the water and travel across land to find other pools, and an ingenious honey badger uses logs to reach a stricken kingfisher chick.

The most extreme environment is the Rann of Kutch salt flats where only the monsoon brings relief to the last population of Indian wild asses.

A sequence of aerial mountain shots and typical fauna including snow leopard, Himalayan ibex and lammergeier is shown, followed by scenes of Buddhist monasteries and winter festivals.

The Buddhist's respect for all nature stems from the ancient animist belief system in which animals were thought of as living embodiments of the spirit world.

Thapar then travels to the south side of the mountains where lush forests of oak, birch, spruce and rhododendron thrive on the monsoon rains.

Animals in this region include Himalayan tahr, yellow-throated marten and grey langurs, shown feeding on Indian horse chestnut shoots.

In the opening scene, Valmik Thapar tracks lion-tailed macaques in southern India, a very rare fruit and seed eating monkey.

The Sinharaja forest of Sri Lanka has more unique species than anywhere else on the subcontinent, including dozens of kinds of jumping spiders, each with their own courtship signals.