Bannerghatta National Park

Staying at home during weekends is one of the things I hate the most. I meet friends or go for shopping or jaunt around various places in and around Bengalooru (Bangalore). Incidentally, it happens that my roommate and friends are also like-minded, which makes us explore many different places around Bengalooru. Bannerghatta National Park is the first place we chose to mark the beginning of our expedition. Situated at a distance of 22 km from Bengalooru and covering about 25,000 acres of hilly region, Bannerghatta National Park is an important National Park in India one must not fail to visit if you visit Karnataka.

Deciding to go to Bannerghatta, we aggregated some information about it. We learnt that Bannerghtta National Park remains closed on Tuesday. One can go either by BMTC buses or by private vehicle. Since there are a lot of buses at regular intervals to Bannerghatta from Majestic, BMTC is preferable. On a fine Saturday morning of 24th November 2007, we left home at 8 in the morning and reached Bannerghatta at about 10:15. We had to stand in a queue to get tickets for the safari and the zoo. Since we had gone during weekends, we had to pay a little extra for the tickets.

We started off with the safari. Meshed vehicles of the forest department do a good job of taking you to various parts of the Bannerghatta Biological Park (BBP) amidst a myriad of wild animals like lions, tigers etc. roaming freely in the dense forest terrain. You might even get a feeling of being inside a bone in zoo and all the animals coming and visiting you from outside. Those 45 minutes were truly memorable!

After finishing our safari, we proceeded to the zoo where many other not-so-wild animals and birds are kept. It was an exhaustive collection. Later we moved to aquarium. Maintenance of the aquarium is good. Delighted by the diverse and colourful birds and fishes, we went ahead to the Reptile Park.

We had no idea that there are so many types of reptiles! I didn't know the names of most of the reptiles except snakes and crocodiles etc. We came to know why Bannerghatta is so famous for its Reptile Park. We literally got exhausted by the end of it.

It was already past 2 O'clock in the afternoon and it was time for lunch. So we thought of having food. There are shops and hotels just outside the National Park. We had a nice lunch. Our visit wasn't over since we hadn't visited the Butterfly Park yet.

We took tickets to the Butterfly Park. Butterfly Park is is a kind of unique zoo I have ever seen. It's the first of its kind in India. It's a doom shaped closed space in which various class of butterflies are maintained. Informative paintings are drawn on the walls of museum adjacent to the park. You can learn almost everything about the butterflies in that museum. If you are still curious, you can even watch a video show which gives more in-depth information about these idyllic species.

There are many other places if you want to trek. But we were really, really exhausted. So we decided to come back. All in all, it was an unforgettable outing. If you are bored of the intricacies of the city life and if you badly need to experience the diversity in flora and fauna of the nature without traveling too far, then Bannerghatta is the right place you should consider going to.

UPDATE:
My friends have asked for a few more details, which I thought are worth mentioning here (Some points are already mentioned in the article, but I've listed them here again for the sake of completeness):

• BMTC bus service to Bannerghatta is very good. BMTC also provides Volvo (A/C) buses.
• You need to pay a nominal fee if you want to take photographs in the Bannerghatta National Park as well as in the Butterfly Park.
• Entrance and photography tickets are separate for the Zoo/Safari and the Butterfly Park.
• Entrance fees are a more on weekends and holidays.
  
• You get chats and cold drinks inside the zoo as well as outside the entrance.
• On Tuesdays, Bannerghatta National Park remains closed.