Stories from India (भारत) - Flora & Fauna

Besides big cities with lots of traffic and people, India has to offer a big variety of open nature and wildlife. There a plenty of wildlife sanctuaries and national parks spread across the country - fortunately, because only in the last 40 or so years the preservation and protection of the Indian wildlife became a topic. Before that, plenty of hunting for elephant, tiger, was totally normal and widely common over there.

While in Bangalore we visited the Bannerghatta Biological Park which has a zoo and safari area with has plenty of adopted and rescued animals in a nice place south of town. Entry fee for zoo & safari was $3.50 and you could spend pretty much all day there. We saw some cobras, pythons, leopards, monkey, siamese(!) jackals, elephants in the zoo and plenty of tiger, lions, bears on the safari.

The Nagarhole National Park, where we spent 3 days, is 4-5hrs southwest of Bangalore and if you ever in India I recommend you go there for a few days. This park and the neighbouring Bandipur park has the highest density of elephants in entire Asia (1500+) and around 65 tigers living free and roaming the 248 sq mile (Nagarhole) area. Traveling via boat on the Kabini river, we saw elephants, marsh crocodiles, deer, lots of monkeys (rhesus macaque and langur), and many different birds.

After getting up at 5am in the morning on Saturday, we headed out via boat to cross the river and then onwards on a Safari truck in search for tigers. Unfortunately, there was no sighting of them that day but still plenty of langur monkeys, gaur, wild dogs, hogs, and again all types of birds to watch.

buck fight!