By Lauren Ober
December 8, 2010
In 2006, after a failed yet entertaining Pennsylvania congressional campaign, Raj Peter Bhakta hit the road. First stop: India. Bhakta was on the hunt for the next Steve Irwin — the famed Australian wildlife expert who had recently met an untimely demise at the end of a stingray’s barb.
Though Bhakta, then 31, had just lost his first political race, he still had the entrepreneurial zeal he’d shown on the second season of Donald Trump’s mogul-making reality show “The Apprentice.” If he could find a tea-sipping, head-bobbling, tiger-taming Indian replacement for Irwin, he reasoned, he’d have a hit show on his hands. Who wouldn’t watch that show?
To find his star, Bhakta traveled to all of India’s national parks and interviewed gamekeepers and wardens. He held auditions in Bollywood. But he returned home…
