Bannerghatta National Park
http://flickrhivemind.net/Tags/bannerghatta/Interesting
http://www.karnataka.com/tourism/bangalore/bannerghata.html
Early morning wake up – in the weekend... maybe not the best idea, but we had a really good reason for it. It was time to start our trip to Bannerghatta National Park.
At the hotel lobby they have Ganesha statue, every day it is decorated with colorful shawl and flowers. Today the color was yellow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesha
Finally at the Bannerghatta, we bought tickets to Safari ride with a bus and to the Zoo afterwards.
Those safari busses are cool... there are metal nets covering the windows and only small holes where people were able to take photos of the animals. It felt like we were inside the moving gage and animals were roaming free around us.
We got the best seats... of course... in the front of the bus, with a good view to animals and great opportunity to capture those with camera. First we went to the Herbivores section. First area was habitat by Spotted deers (Chital), Sambar deers and a Gaur.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chital
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambar_(deer)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaur
In the next area the bus suddenly stopped, there was a huge number of bears sitting and lying in the middle of the road. And they were not interested about moving from their positions at all :)
We were able to continue our trip only after the bus driver almost pushed some of the bears out of the road with the bus. It was hilarious... they moved so lazily, without no hurry, almost like announcing: You came to see us, so here we are.
Finally it was time to go to Tiger's area, which was the place I was really waiting for to visit.
The white tiger is my spirit animal and I still can remember the first time I saw them alive in this same place couple of years ago.
This time we first saw couple of original tigers, who were fooling around... eating grass, jumping here and there, one even went to get some scratch from the zoo worker... like a big household cat :)
We did also see white tigers, but only one was roaming free in the safari area, others were on the cage near the entrance of the Tiger cage. So I didn't got any good photos of them... :(
Poem about the white tiger from one page, where is more information about the spirit animals.
With Power and Strength, you glide through the night,
silent as the mist that evaporates with
the first rays of morning light
Eyes, glowing with a blue fire that reflect both water and sky,
you stare deeply into the Soul, leaving nothing unknown,
for all is revealed before your penetrating gaze
Last stop in the safari tour was the lions. And there were a lot of them...they have been fed just recently said the guide and were in a really playful mood. Youngsters were chasing and whacking each others with their paws.
The bus arrived to the front gate of a butterfly park and we stepped out there. Last time I didn't visit this place at all, because I had so little time, but now we have arranged whole day for this zoo trip and had enough time to go every place. And let me tell you... this place is really worth to see... so amazing butterflies flying around in the gigantic greenhouse full of beautiful plants and flowers. The guide inside helped us by pointing out butterflies, from which to take photos.
The guide also took us to a special tour to Butterfly nursery, where they are raising the new butterflies, we saw breeding center, caterpillars etc. There was a couple of children with their mom and those children followed us around and in the end spent some time with us in the room, where caterpillars were taken care. They were talking to us in Hindi and we answered in English... neither understood what others were saying but we have a great time!
The guide put one of the caterpillar on top of my friends nose...and she was just saying: 'take it away... take it away...take it away... '
I also got some caterpillars to my hand... and oh my...they tickled a lot.
In the end of the trip we spent some hours in the zoo, seeing snakes, turtles, zebra, elephant, porcupines, birds and the most special one: White peacocks.
I didn't even know earlier that white peacocks are existing. There was also a possibility to go an elephant ride and get a pat from elephant's trunk... of course if you paid some money for it. There was this very cute baby elephant, which was running around and I managed to capture some great photos from him.
There was free monkeys all around the zoo and some of them were really posing while people were taking photos of them. One little girl was staring at us a lot, when my friend waved at her, she got scared and run to her mom. Yeah... we do look so scary... lolz.
Everything great ends at some time, also our trip, so we returned to the hotel, tired but happy. It was a great trip :)
