Trip to Rajasthan - II: A Royal Visit

That's me looking forward to the day !!




Day 2 began on a lazy note with us leaving Diu at 10. We were expecting the drive to be long with bad roads, but luckily the roads were very nice only with some bad patches. We just took about 3 hours and we were at Gir. Varun ensured that this time the hotel search did not take much time & we had a nice big room for 500. But the best part was the sitting area outside our room. It was covered with trees, protected from the sun & offered the perfect ambience for some drinks & hukka. (neither happened though !!!)

After a quick but tasty lunch, we hurried to the lion safari spot where the rides were to begin by 3.

Now there are 2 types of safaris

a. Where you take a private jeep into the jungle for 3 hours. This charges you Rs.900, but the catch is that this goes into the open jungle of area of 1400 sq km and covers only a set path of 20 km or so. So, NO GUARANTEE of seeing the lion
b. Where you go into the jungle in a 25 seater bus. BUT, this bus roams around in an ENCLOSED area of 4 sq. Km. which reportedly has 16 lions in it !! Thus, a
sighting is all but guaranteed.

You don’t require brains to choose between the options !!!

Seated in the bus, with 2 cameras and 2 window seats (Kaushik, legally & Mihir, illegally !!) with Varun ready to jump on any side depending where the lion was sighted, we left.

After random deer & sambars, we made a sighting . . . and what a sighting it was !

We saw a dark maned lion, 2 lionesses & 2 cubs (quite large, though). The lion lived upto its reputation of being a lazy animal (it was sleeping throughout the 10-15 minutes our bus was there. It slept through all whistles, noises we made, roar of the lioness, noise of the bus and yes, an attempted stone throw on it by Varun !!!


Mujhko neend aa rahi hai, sone do !!!


We were super excited and went on a photo shooting spree. Everyone in the bus was falling over each other in order to get a better view.

A prince was lying just in front of my window, say 20 feet away. It looked at us, it sneezed, it yawned.


After the sneeze


Yawnnn !!!


The other prince was walked towards it and played with it for some time. These were unbelievable scenes for all of us !


The playing cubs


Can you see the similarity with dogs here ???



Then the Queen walked towards the kids. And this was a scene straight out of Kaal, just replace the tiger with the lioness. She played around with the kids & sat a few feet away. At this time, Varun bribed the bus driver to go a bit closer to them. Rs. 20 did the trick that a lot of convincing could not do !! And, we were closer. More photos followed. Videos of “the walk” were taken too.


About to get up !!



The WALK








As a gift to us, the lioness roared for us too, showing her jaws in full glory. And what a scene that was !!


The ROAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRR !!!!!!!!!


This was turning out to be a once in a lifetime experience for us. Unfortunately, we could capture the King Lion only in his sleeping posture.

On our way back, we were just looking at the photographs, least interested in the remaining part of the safari. It ended soon & we were having the feeling of a “vasool” trip.

Varun actually named the trip the “chill” trip. With no drinks, chilling took a different meaning though. Dinner was sumptuous in pure gujju style – we had bhakri, ghee, jaggery & khichdi among other things. The Menu was the most funny and so it deserved the snap attached here !


Check out the spellings - of everything !!!


Next day did not sound as interesting with a 750 km drive to Abu ahead of us. Let’s see what’s in store ! Keep checking this blog for more !!!