Bannerghatta National Park, Bangalore, India 16.7.2011

Bannerghatta National Park

http://www.enidhi.net/2010/07/bannerghatta-national-park-wildlife.html

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.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloth_bear

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.

http://wolfs_moon.tripod.com/whitetigertotem.html

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 :)

Bangalore, India. 11.7. - 20.7.2011

Bangalore, India
All kind of things what happened during our stay in the Bangalore, India 11.7. - 20.7.2011 with pictures.

Monday 11.7.2011

Time to do some work also, so we drove to the office first thing in the morning. On the way there we saw a local shanty town. Somehow seeing those children is making me sad, I wish I could do something for them, but reality is that no-one can’t save all the children in this world. I just have to close my heart and try not to think about this issue.

After the working hours, we went to shopping. And let me tell you about one thing: I have always thought that I’m master level shopper… but oh my god :O
My friend is totally something…

Tuesday 12.7.2011

While waiting the hotel car to pick us up, I started fixing my broken shawl by sewing the hole in it. 4 ladies were wiping the water away from the front of the building and started staring at me…. Finally they gathered enough courage and approached me. One of the ladies wanted to see with what I was sewing my shawl. They didn’t speak English and we didn’t speak their language but we managed to understand each other somewhat with sign language. But mostly we just laughed… and every time we saw each other we waved and laughed.

For these I don't remember date...

Insident with Salmiac:

We are so bad... we made one of our consultants to eat Salmiac candy :D
Too bad that I didn't have my camera with me, the look in his face was showing all what he thought about that stuff...hahahaha
And other consultants knew that stuff, because they have lived in Finland... but even they didn't warn him. Poor fellow
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salty_liquorice

Other stuff:

We have found the best shopping places around here: Central shopping mall, Brigade road, Garuda mall, Commercial Street, Deepam silk shop…  

I bet the hotel employees thinks we are really crazy foreign persons, as we are doing all kind of things, which are not so common with people, who are staying at the 5 star hotels. Every evening after arriving back to the hotel from office, we just drop our laptop bags to our rooms and went roaming around the city. And we are doing all our travelling at the city with Rickshaws. Usually people are taking hotel car with a driver :D

And let’s talk about swimming too… some evenings after returning from our shopping trip we went for a swim. At the pool… and there are hotel restaurants situated around the pool. So people were having their dinners while we were swimming. We didn’t let that disturb, but I have to admit that it didn’t feel very nice either…

Photo of the temple on the way to the office. Outside of the temples usually were older ladies making flower garlands. In Hinduism, flowers constitute an important offering made to the deities. Flowers are used while doing puja at home, temples and at sacred places.

Two different kind of transportation was available everywhere... a local Rolls Royce and an oxcart.

This plant would have been Selma's favorite, because it was bright pink :)