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Visit to Bannerghata National Park

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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.

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