After a hiatus of two years I am back to my blog. It's first of January 2014 and to start with I would like to wish all the visitors of my blog a wonderful new year. To celebrate the start of this year I planned to visit Bannerghatta National park along with my wife. For the people who are not party lovers and prefer to enjoy themselves by being in a calmer surrounding, a zoo or a national park is an apt choice to spend their time. Since I can unquestionably put myself into that category of people, when my wife suggested Bannerghatta National Park's name for spending the first day of the New Year, there was hardly any disagreement and the plan was set in no time.
Bannerghatta Biological Park is towards the southern side of Bangalore and owing to its huge landmass you find it almost at the tip of the city. Nevertheless connectivity to the place is excellent, you can reach the park from any part of the city with minimal guidance and hardships, barring those related to traffic. To reach the park first thing one needs to do is to reach Gopalan Innovation Mall, Bannerghatta road. From outer ring road we took the bus numbered 500C to reach this place. One can find many private and BMTC buses calling for the National park. Since I knew that Bus number 365 directly goes to the park I waited patiently for this bus to arrive and got to board it soon. Frequency of this bus is quite good and one should not have to wait for more than 12-15 minutes to board it at Gopalan Innovation Mall. Under normal traffic conditions it takes around 30-45 minutes to reach the park. Whats good about taking BMTC buses is that they have a bus stand right at the park entrance and you get down quite close to the park entry. If you are using this mode of transport to reach the park its advisable to take a daily bus pass as it would save both your money and time in buying tickets during to-and-fro journey.
Once you get down at the park, head straight to the ticket counter to purchase tickets for Safari, the Zoo and Butterfly park. It’s a combined ticket but option exists to buy tickets only for one or more of them. Since the queue to reach the ticket counter is usually quite long – and the length can be really intimidating at times – almost everyone takes tickets for all of them at once. There are many small food kiosks in close proximity and one can have variety of items after buying the tickets and before going for safari. The place is well managed and you would find a glimpse of this at every step. Once you enter into the park you might find another long queue and might have to wait for approximately 15-20 minutes before getting into the mini-bus for safari. The entire stretch is divided into separate areas for different animals – Bear, Lion, Tiger and White Tiger. Surprisingly even in an open area you find these animals roaming quite close to the roads and thus get a good view of them. The good part is, it feels exciting to see herds of so many lions and tigers roaming together; the bad part is, it gets over in a short span of 30 to 40 minutes. The mini bus drops you close to the Butterfly park, which you can visit before going for the zoo ( I missed visiting this park and hence cannot give any details about it). Next, head towards the zoo. It’s a regular zoo quite similar to the ones you find at any other place. I did not find anything worth mentioning about this part of the park. The park closes at 5:00 PM and you may have to plan accordingly. Once done with the Zoo, you can shop for souvenirs, have snacks or roam around as per your choice. For return journey you can come back to the bus stop and take Bus number 365 or E4 to return to different parts of the city.
So what’s good about the park? First of all its well connected with the main city. Pickup and drop is extremely convenient with high frequency buses running right till the doorsteps of the park. It’s well maintained and has good number of small kiosks for refreshment and light shopping. Karnataka government is known to commercialize and exploit its resource to the max and you can witness it quite clearly. The facilities are better and so are the ticket charges. I think many other states need to learn from Karnataka when it comes to promoting tourism and making money out of it.
What’s not so good about the park? First of all, the crowd can swell significantly during weekends or holidays. This can make you wait for longer than expected while going for Safari. The zoo is an average one.
So this was my review and opinion about Bannerghatta Biological Park, Bangalore. Hope you enjoyed reading through it.
