I almost got mauled in Bangalore!!

Okay, not true in the least but nevertheless, I hope it got your attention for what I hope is a fun post. So, after our fun lunch at UB City, we journeyed south to Bannerghatta National Park. This park is essentially a preserve filled with animals and also contains a zoo as well. We arrived there after a crazy drive through the city. What am I talking about, EVERY drive through the city is crazy. More on that later...

So this is what it looks like at the entrance to the park:

I gotta say, I was starting to get pretty excited for this place. After waiting in the line, we boarded our bus for the travel through the park.

After boarding our bus, we proceeded to take a road that lead us into the park. The first animals we encountered were very exciting to the Indians on board. For us Minnesotans, not so much...

Yep! Good old fashioned deer here at Bannerghatta. Pretty funny to hear the excitement from the crowd. The next creatures were bears. Now, as I said, this park was pretty cool because it was more of the animals in their environment, but clearly they must feed them right off the road because every animal following the deer were right next to the bus! Made for some great shots but felt a little "manufactured." Still very cool. So, here are some close bear shots:

As I said, pretty cool being that close but this was nothing. It all felt very Jurassic Park-ish as we traveled from section to section we literally would enter gated sections where they would open one end, let us in up to the next gate, close the gate behind us, and then open the gate in front of us. VERY COOL feeling!

Next up, lions! Check out these pics:

And to give you some perspective, this is a shot of the bus ahead of us. Take a look on the right:

Next up, tigers! Here are some pictures. I cannot describe how big these suckas were.

They even had white tigers but this one was content in chillin' by the pond versus the road.

Here's another picture of the tiger. Again, these boys were big. This is literally right out the front windshield of the bus!

Finally, here is a video of the tiger. He keeps looking at something beyond the fence. We eventually saw it was another tiger beyond another gate. Scary part was, not more than 5 minutes later we were in that spot of the road and the tiger was nowhere to be seen.

Lastly, one final shot of our bus.

Pretty great experience...! Especially when you consider it only cost the four of us $14 US. TOTAL! Well, there's another post for the day. More to come for sure. I really hope you're all enjoying this as much as I'm enjoying posting! Next up, my "Driving the streets of Bangalore" post and my fact from Saturday. Plenty more to come y'all! Later,

~ Rich