Bijapur, April 20 -- One day last week, Narayanpur's district collector Namrata Jain hopped onto the back of a motorcycle and took a ride through a dense forest, navigating narrow forest tracks and, at times, no tracks at all, travelling to villages that aren't there on the map yet.

Narayanpur, Chhattisgarh, is one of the three districts (Bijapur and Dantewada are the other two) covered by one of India's most inhospitable forests, Abujhmad, which translates as hills of the unknown in Gondi. And unknown, the 5,000 square km large forest has been, until now.

Jain and her team are part of a team mapping the area. They have been travelling by bike, occasionally tractor, and often, foot, crossing streams under a punishing summer sun to reach...