Chhoti Haldwani is a small village in the foothills of Kumaon region of Uttarakhand. This village was once owned by the famous hunter turned conservationist of British India, the Jim Corbett.

Popularly called as 'Carpet Sahib' by the villagers, Edward James Corbett was a third generation Irishman, who was born and lived in India till 1947. He bought the small hamlet of 221 acres, Chhoti Haldwani in 1915 in Rs. 1500.00 from Guman Singh Barua to develop it into a model village and settled some forty tenants there. Corbett remained concerned about Chhoti Haldwani even after he left India.

He built houses for his tenants and had a wall raised around the village to protect crops and villagers from wild animals. Today the village has over 130 families with a population of 750.

From 1907 to 1938, Jim Corbett killed a total of 10 large man-eaters in Kumaon and Garhwal region of present day Uttarakhand. Later on he left hunting and turned a conservationist and helped to establish the first National Park of India in 1936- Hailey National park, which was later named as Jim Corbett National Park in 1957.

“ Often as I walked along its paths as the sun went down, with the evening light on the ripening corn and the blue hills in the background, I would think that there could not be a more beautiful village in the world .”

                                 - Maggie Corbett (Jim Corbett’s Sister) about Chhoti Haldwani