Bannerghatta National Park, Bangalore

I was quite impressed going through the articles of fellow Blogger Amritha Prem who has completed the A-Z marathon of writing articles arising out from each of the 26 alphabets and it did attract my interest of picking up this format sometime in future.

One such article penned by her was about a zoo in Chennai. (https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/95768097/posts/452)

As a result, I glanced through my own memories and here goes out, today’s post – Bannerghatta National Park.

The park, which was once upon a time rested in the outskirts of Bangalore is now proud to be enveloped within the city.

Back in those days, when Bangalore took pride in calling itself the Garden city (now Silicon valley), where malls were yet to be born and movie going was an infrequent activity, the city showered entertainment to its residents, through means of its vast spacious gardens, clean lakes, hills, exhibitions and the National Park.

I do recall the days when the elders used to plan a visit to the park alongwith the neighbors\relatives, packing the bags with home made food, making it a great picnic. The lemon rice, puliyogere, pickle, curd rice that came out of the steel tins, spreading them on a green banana leaf and relishing the lunch sitting on the dusty ground under shade of the tree was a different experience altogether. Well!…

Coming back to the present world, sometime back in one of the summer, where my tenants had invited their relative kids for summer holidays from their native Andhra, and these kids, one fine day, expressed their interest to see the zoo. My cousin Keshav who had visited us also agreed to the idea and off we went, taking my friend Ravi too along.

The park is in Bannerghatta, which is around 20 kms from the main city and is one of the popular tourist destination housing a zoo, butterfly enclosure, an aquarium, a snake house and Safari park. The park offers a wide range of diverse wildlife with Bengal and white tigers, leopards, jackals, alligators, hippos, cobras, phython and many species.

The kids were enthralled with the vast spacious zoo and excited in encountering with lives that they only saw in books and they enjoyed each and every moment of the day. I could sense my childhood self in their eyes. It felt even I would have displayed the same eager and enthusiasm back then, but the magnitude was now low though and the best I could do was to involve self in the world of these kids and explain them about the animals.

The start of the zoo journey

Keshav seemed to be enjoying too…

Well, the Leopard got disinterested in the snap….

Emu and Ostrich

With the Deers

With the zebra

Ravi taking them on an elephant ride

The Jackal seems to appreciate privacy

The Tigers greeting us during the safari ride

Wife took satisfaction in watching birds, alligators …

It did turn out an interesting day with them. Well, we all made it one……