Staying in Bangalore, thought of posting something about Bangalore. Thinking of Bangalore, there are loads to talk about. To start with, let me start with Bannergatta National Park.

Located in south west of Bangalore, the National Park is around 15Kms from Madiwala (where I stay). The way to this national park is kinda hilly and one can always enjoy the ride in motor bikes. There are also Volvo buses available to this place from the city bus terminus. You can board in to any of the buses numbered 365, to reach this place.

The following post is kinda big that may contain boring stories. If you wanna take a quick photo look of Bannergatta National Park you can reach my picasa web album over here.

We started our trip at around 14.00 hrs. After the 1 hour journey through the city traffic, we reached the national park and started collecting money for the safari ride. Suggestion !: Start early if you planning to go there, so that you can spend more time in the zoo. As usual none of us had more than 100 rupees in our wallet So we went to the ticket counter to enquire about the ticket price. To our surprise we fell short of money (for the Grand Safari). For an adult in a weekend, the ticket prices vary from 30 to 120. There are many rides like, Wild Safari, Grand safari, Zoo, … Suggestion 2: Always have adequate cash (no cards !!) in hand as there are no ATM machines out there (there was supposed to be an ATM out side — may be 1km away from the zoo). No. Not even Credit Cards. Some how, after continuous wallet digging, we managed to get tickets for the grand safari.

Initially we were asked to wait in a long queue (there are queues for all kinda rides), then we got our van. We were the first one to board in to the van, so got hold of a nice seat. Suggestion 3: Try to get the front side seats as you get to see the animals through the wind shield also. The van started in 10 minutes. We were kinda excited about the ride (also kinda worried that we don’t waste the money which was got after a long battle with our wallets).

The journey started off with the herbivores zone. The first 10 minutes was kinda bad as we barely saw a couple of monkeys (and some dogs too ). After which we saw wild bisons and some deers. Not so exciting thou’. Still we didn’t loose our hopes. Then we entered the Bear zone. Atlast something really wild. Suddenly the van slowed down and there we saw a bear. In the path way. Grazing ?!? (I don’t know what it was doing). We were all excited and started to click our mobiles. Trying to cover the bear. Still surprised, we saw a couple of more bears on our way. The van driver was so kind to stop the vehicle in our request (You are not supposed to get down thou’ !!). Suggestion 4: If you have a camera, don’t forget to take it. Its a nice chance to show your photographic skills. We saw around 5 to 8 bears on our way.

Crossing the bear zone, we entered the Lion zone. Yeah. Now to meet the king and say hai to him. Everybody were excited. We were searching for lions everywhere. Even after continuous scanning of the land, we hardly managed to find two lions and those lions were very lazy. Can’t take any photos.

We then went to the tiger zone. We hoped that it will not be like the lion zone. Our hopes didn’t fall. We saw loads of Bengal Tigers. We would have seen around 5 to 10 tigers. We even saw white tigers. Cool. We felt satisfied for what we have paid.

Finishing the grand safari, we got down near the ButterFly park. Entry at Rs. 30 each. We didn’t wanna go on for yet another batter with our wallets. Suggestion 5: If had been there tell me how it was After the bumpy ride, we were all hungry. Went to a near by shop to eat something. Suggestion 6: Do take my second suggestion.

There is also a zoo in there. We were doubtful whether we will be allowed To our surprise we could use the same ticket for the zoo. As we were very tired, we just covered a small part of the zoo. After getting out of the zoo, we managed to get something for out tummy spending around Rs.40 (thats was all we had that time) and started our way back to my room. Though it was a quick trip, it was really a great fun. Hope i have given you some suggestions that shall help you when you go out there !!