Weekend Trip-Bannerghatta National Park, Bangalore

Bangalore has a vast flora and fauna swathe in and around and is known as Garden city for its beauty. With time, as more and more concrete jungle has been digging in roads the cover has also reduced with even greater speed. There are umpteen number of lakes around the city, some of then beautiful and fresh and some dying of not being able to aid them from the growing human waste dumps.
At around a 30 kms drive from the city centre, is the very well known Bannerghatta National Park. This place has been able to establish itself in a nice green cover on the outskirts of Bangalore and houses a zoo with lot of varieties of birds and animals, Children Park and a small cafeteria. It also offers a Lion, Tiger and bear safari with lot of jungle lodge buses plying throughout the day with tourists from all across, to sight these wild animals kept in their natural habitat, with the major attraction being White tiger. There is also a unique butterfly park on the other side of the zoo, which is an extremely beautiful, well maintained park with a huge dome shaped building for keeping butterflies in a Green house type environment, suitable to them. It also has a small museum for people looking to read and known more about the butterflies and moths and their beautiful world.
Bannerghatta Zoo: The zoo has a lot of variety of all kinds of birds and animals kept in the cages. Over the weekends the place is frequented by school children. This is their fantasy land with white peacocks, zebras, elephant rides, mini tree huts and a lovely

park and lots






of exciting colorful
species of birds. The sight of snakes and crocodiles scare them completely and aquatic birds from night herons, storks and pelicans show them the serenity in the nature. The place has been maintained in an average manner and with huge area available, there is much more that needs to be done. A small theater to show a film on the national park and variety of birds is also played at a nominal fee for some 45 mins of show.


Jungle Safari: Jungle safari remains the biggest attraction for all coming in and there would be surely a lot of lens men in every single bus going out in the wild. The areas for safari has been divided into two parts, offering tourists a complete safari covering Tiger, lion, bear and deer arenas and another one, which offers tiger, lion safari, and have been priced accordingly. The buses which ply on these jungle areas are in extremely poor condition, showing the low of the maintenance. There are no roads in most of the safari area and it’s an uncomfortable bumpy ride for all. The animals do look irritated sometimes with frequency of buses rising over the weekend to maximum and most of the times, people making lot of noise as they inch close to these animals. These animals though tired of being showcased, look much better than those kept in the cages in even worse conditions.
Butterfly Park: This is the best part of the national park visit. From the road, a huge board with a butterfly etched to its back, a nice open place with lot of greenery and small boards with tit-bits of information on butterflies welcome and attract inside as you pay for entry ticket. This place has been maintained excellently and has a very green envelop all around. After a little stride and reading fascinating information display about the moths and butterflies, a dome in the centre of the frame appears with a colossal butterfly modeled as the entrance to this place. As you enter, it appears to be a fairy land with water pool, lot of flowers & plants, butterflies, and some scent in the air. There are lots of colored fishes in this pool and a small bridge built over it. The place is huge and houses all sorts of



butterflies inside. To the top, there are huge nests made of fiber and cloth, tucked to the top. The entire place has a compelling beauty to it. And for some time you would feel completely lost into it. The pathway takes you through the entire place and ends up in a beautiful museum about birds and moths. There is pond at the back of the park and also the butterfly rearing plant.

Some Tips:

• Gets extremely crowded, so if you are planning to visit this place, start early to avoid queues for safaris.
• There are Volvo buses available too directly to BNP which could be a great medium if you are looking to come by public transport.
• The place is a great picnic spot. There is lot of space to enjoy a good meal and play games with your family over the weekend. Also the pond & green cover at the Butterfly Park is idea to spend some casual moments over a weekend.
  
• Best time to sight butterflies is from 9:00am -3:00pm.