Visit to Bannerghatta National Park

On the lazy Sunday morning I along with my friends –Aditya, Shiva and Vipul, left IIM Bangalore campus to check out Bannerghatta National Park. Before starting we googled for directions and reviews and it really helped. We now knew that we need to catch bus no. 365 that will directly drop us at park’s gate.We reached there around 11 a.m. but by that time queue had already taken shape of the largest reptile :P It would have easily taken 1-2 hrs had we also lined up. I did some “Jugaad” :P and we got the tickets of grand safari in minutes. Now we have to wait for the forest bus which came in about 15 min.

Grand Safari
I was praying that there should not be any children or girls in our bus because they cannot keep quite even for an hour. But as it was Sunday so I guess God was also sleepy by that time. Finally we started for a 16km safari. Bannerghatta National park is divided into fenced zone and roads covering every part of zone. So citing is almost sure. In around 15minutes bus reached in dense forest area and we started spotting animals. Spotted dear, Sambar, Ducks were among the first few. I took out my camera and figured that I did the biggest blunder of the day. I forgot the batteries at my place…ahhh. Luckily I had an extra set in my bag but it was not fully charged.

joint family

Other few minutes passed and we entered the ‘Bear zone’. What we saw there was breath taking –a sloth bear was charging towards the bus. It came very close to bus and even stood up and tried to peek in as if he came to see us. Later we saw few more sloth bears. Next was the ‘Lion zone’. Soon a cat crossed our way and it was a big one – lioness. We keep tracking her and soon discovered there complete family. This was the time my batteries died and I was left with my 2MP mobile camera.

White Tigers

Last in the list was ‘Tiger zone’ which I found very small in area. We saw 2 rare white tigers. Other tigers were in their cage. I found it a bit odd to keep tigers in such condition in a national park. I would rather call that place hybrid of zoo and national park. After that we returned and bus dropped us at ‘Butterfly Park’




Butterfly Park

The park was full of variety of flowery plants to attract butterflies. It also had a green house like zone which was very beautiful and full of butterflies. It also has a small man made waterfall and a pool full of fish. They have also put boards to help you in identify the butterfly. There was also a movie show on butterflies but it was in ‘Kannada’ so of no use to us.

By this time we were hungry and finished roaming so we went to a hill view restaurant over there and had some snacks and after getting blessings from ‘Lord Ganesha’ we headed back to IIM B.
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Visitor’s guide:
Overall rating: 3/5
How to get there: bus no. 365, G4 goes directly to park
Safari fee: 180/person
Best time: before 10 am to avoid the queue, any season as the area is enclosed so does not matter.