Skip to main content

Visit to Bannerghata National Park

We had been to Bannerghata National Park last weekend.  It is always good to see wild animals in their natural settings.  The place is quite nice but I cringe at the thought of how close the national park are to the human settlement.  If you look at a slight distance away from the jungle, you can actually see some high rise buildings, which is a bit scary.


We took the Lion and Tiger safari + Zoo.  The price was Rs. 90/person on a weekend.  Luckily we ended up there only an hour after the opening of the park.  We got lucky and only had to stand in the line for about 1/2 hour before we boarded the swaraj mazda bus.  This bus took us first to the Lion safari.  We saw a couple of lions sleeping as usual.  I heard I think on Animal Planet that it is the 2nd laziest animal on the planet.  It sleeps nearly 20 hrs/day.  From there we proceeded to the tiger sanctuary.  It was amazing that we were going in the bus while tigers/leoprads were in the cage :)  It wasa  bit of anti-climax to say the least as I wanted to see some tigers in wild.  They have about 4 white togers and quite a few Bengal tigers.  They are such fantastic animals to watch and just hope that people see enough reason to keep their habitat intact so that they can grow in numbers and provide a chance to our kids to be able to see such a magnificent creature.  Leopards are strong and look as elegant as the tigers.


The zoo was quite nice (probably not as good or nearly as big as the Mysore Zoo).  They had this enclosure for a white peacock and I swear it stood in the dancing position with all its feathers up, as if waiting for the rains to come.  This lasted for about 1 hour.  There are many beautiful birds but in full glory, you cannot beat a peacock, white or otherwise.  They have enclosures for ghariyal (endangered indian croc), Zebra, Jackal, Emu, Python, Star Tortoise, Iguanas, Elephant (rides as well), Langur, macaques etc.  On the whole my son (who is 3 yrs old) loved it but I think it is abit tiring after 3-4hours and wanted to go home.


It was quite hot there but as soon as we left, it started pouring.  I have always wondered how wonderful it would be to see these animals/birds in the wild.  I have never been the one to enjoy animals in cages.  This is not where they belong.  However, I also see a need to protect some of these species from becoming extinct. Besides, their natural habitat is vanishing, which is a sad part to see.  Good part to see was that many animals/reptiles/birds are being adopted by citizens.  This is a wondeful way of raising money to  help provide for the fauna or this planet.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

English Vinglish - My Review

This movie looked very promising from the promos.  It seemed like this movie would be an uplifting one and after watching the movie, I can safely say that it was. This is a story about a woman, a housewife, a mother (Sridevi) who is constantly chided by her husband and her daughter for not being able to speak English.  She felt as if she is unable to please her close ones with what she does.  She runs a small catering business from home. One day, she gets a call from her sister in the US to visit her as she needed Sridevi's help for her daughter's marriage.  Sridevi would have to go alone to a foreign land (her close ones would be coming late). She is dreading her visit to US alone since she does not know English. Once in the US, she is not able to communicate and gets a bit disheartened by it.  Once while visiting a place in New York, she saw an advertisement on a bus about learning English in 4 weeks.  She quietly decides to join these classes wi...

India Vs USA

I have been meaning to write on this topic for a while. Ever since I arrived to USA for my undergraduate studies, I have heard arguments between Indians born in the US about what is bad about India and Indians living in India who find bad things, or things they can laugh about and point to say that people are the same everywhere. Having been in the US and India almost an equal amount, my thinking is a bit different on this. I am more indian as far as thinking is concerned i.e. more social, less win at all costs etc. type of thinking. So, my thinking follows the perspective of those Indians living in India. My brother(s) waste no time in telling me how this or that is not right in the USA. Admittedly, that is true. You can always find things that are not good in the US. However, one thing we Indians should keep in mind is that there are a lot of things in India we need to fix first. For example, when we are in India, we keep our house clean but when we are out, we throw garbage o...

Abhinav joins cricket academy

As a young kid, around age of 7 yrs, I used to attend a cricket coaching camp with the Saurashtra Ranji cricketers.  it was split in to 2 sessions - morning and evening. The morning sessions consisted of exercises, sprints, duck walks, frog jumps and some tennis ball practice.  It was strenuous but a lot of fun.  being 7, I seemed to have a lot of energy and loved to participate in this regimen with people who played at the highest domestic level and I used to be in awe of them. In the evening session, we practiced with the leather ball.  Before that, however, we used to master our defensive shots (forward and back foot) with the hanging ball.  The whole point of this article to is to describe all the emotions that I felt when Abhinav started practicing his defense with the hanging ball.   I think the teachers are not as strict nowadays as before and kids have an option to explore things a bit more.  The regimen is not as strenuous and the empha...