Bannerghatta National Park

The name struck me as odd. National? Hadn't heard of it earlier! Anywayz, on a Thursday morning with nothing better to do and hopes of a cheaper entry fee we set out after breaker at around 11 (yea..I know it was quite late..but that's another story). We reached there in about half an hour and I suddenly felt that I preferred sleeping peacefully on my springwell mattress over this. When I confronted my friends (we were 4 in all) that I am getting negative vibes, I was assured we would enjoy the Safari. When we purchased our tickets, we were told May being summer vacations for school children holiday rates would apply. So after purchasing a ticket for Rs 125 each and Rs 20 for the digicam we had, we went it.

The crowd was pretty decent for a Thursday. We stood in the queue for the Grand Safari (that includes tiger, lion, bear and herbivores safari) and waited for another 15 minutes before we boarded the bus occupying corner seats in the hope of getting a nice view and good oppurtunities for clicking pictures. The ride wasn't smooth to say the least and in the beginning we saw nothing excpet a dear and a few cows which the driver said were neel gai but didnt seem to be. Then we entered the bear safari .

This was the best part..actually the only interesting part in the whole ride. We saw lots of bears. I dont remember seeing a bear earlier. Some of the babies looked cute. But the adults were aggressive. One even stood up and held the windows of our bus and one other was frightening the other bears off (I wonder why!)


After this we entered the lion safari and a sleeping lion family was all we saw. The tiger safari wasnt much better, except that I saw 3 white tigers (more than I had seen on that horrible trip to Sundarban back in school)..all sleeping and 2 normal tigers(again, sleeping). The colours of their skin amazed me. It was a bright orange and the black stripes looked quite royal..along with the white patch on the underside.


Anyways, this was the end of the tour. My friends suggested that we can still see the zoo on the same ticket. But when they realized that we were out of the main gate now and the zoo had to be seen before the safari, I was happy. Who wanted to see the zoo anywayz!