Lions, tigers and bears, oh my!

Today was the first time I've ventured out of the city. I dragged my American colleagues out to Bannerghatta National Park which is about 25 km south of the city. Of course, with the Indian roads and traffic, it takes about an hour to get there. We went through some small villages and that really shows how poor the majority of the country is. When you get back into the city you realise how it's not so bad after all, lack of pavement and everything.

The village of Bannerghatta itself is a collection of small huts interspersed with small temples and people selling food from tiny shops. I saw my first Indian monkey just walking down the road. There was a small shack selling goat meat, the carcasses hanging from string outside, a pile of goat heads on the ground. One the drive back, a goat was being bled into a tin bucket. I didn't take any photos as I'd feel bad stopping the car just to take some pictures of people in poverty. Maybe I should try and get over that if I want to document things fully.

The entrance to the zoo part of the park has of course loads of shacks selling fresh food. The minute we parked the cars we were surrounded by beggars, women and young children. As always it's difficult to ignore them but you have to. Giving them a few rupees is not going to help, you need to try and sort out the causes behind the poverty, on an individual level, there is not a lot that you can do. It's heartbreaking but part of India, this place makes you become a lot more coldhearted, it's the only way otherwise you'll just go mad.

We went for the grand safari which involved queuing for an hour or so and then getting onto an old bus with a lot of grills over the windows. I think they may have gone a little overboard as it made it difficult to see. Luckily I was right by a window and there was a small gap in the mesh through which I could take some photos.

First we went through a part of the park that had all the different types of deer. By this time it was about midday so there was not much activity from the wildlife:

The parts of the park that you can visit are divided up into several sections, with different animals in each section. After the deer we saw some bears:


They have some lion in the park too, this is a youngster bred in the park, he's about two years old:



And then we saw tigers, lots of tigers:





They really are fantastic animals.

While this was just a small park, the scenery was beautiful, with stony hills and ridges covered in exotic vegetation. It's convinced me that I really need to go to one of the larger reserves and see some of the real jungle. I'm thinking of maybe Nagarhole or Kambini, both of which are over six hours drive away. I will keep you posted.