Gir National Park: The Last Home of the Asiatic Lion

I visited Sundarban Tiger Sanctuary. There were no tiger sightings. I visited Kaziranga National Park. Rhinos were sighted, but tigers were still elusive. Now I had arrived near the last home of the asiatic lion. There are only 411 left in the wild and there is only one place in the world they live in the wild. That place is the Gir National Park and lion sanctuary. Here was another chance to see a big, wild cat.

After arriving in Junagadh, I was introduced to a guy at the hotel I chose. He spoke some English and he had been to the national park that day. He told me what I needed to know. I was trying to find out about an office in town I could visit to get information about going to the park and about how to go about getting inside. He told me I could catch a local bus from the bus station, which happened to be right across the street. He told me to catch the earliest bus, at 6. That way I could possibly find other foreigners to join with on a jeep safari into the park. He told me some prices, but I figured they were the Indian national prices, not the prices for foreigners. I thanked him for the information. It was very useful.

Still not sure how much it was going to cost, but figuring it would be a fair amount because I was alone, I got up at 5:30 and headed across the street to the bus station. There I met a couple of Indian guys who were heading to the park as well. They were looking for people to join them on the safari and so we talked about going together. I figured it would be the same kind of set up as Kaziranga. I could buy my park pass, which would be rather high compared to the price for an Indian, and then we could share the cost of the jeep. It seemed like a great plan.

However, when we arrived at the little town where that serviced the park, we met a tea merchant (who didn't give me any change for the tea that we bought, and he should have). He told us that the way things worked here was that a person bought a permit that could be shared by six people. This was even if there was only one. And the permit for Indians was a different price than that for foreigners. Our plan wasn't going to work. And it seemed that I might be out of luck, unless I could find some other foreigners to share the permit price with. I figured I had come all the way out there (it was a two hour bus ride from Junagadh), so I may as well hang around to see if any foreigners would show up and need an extra person.

I went to the park office and hung out for a while. I met a couple of the guides, who were all local. And I also met a man who had been working as a forest officer in the park for 38 years. He was going to retire in 6 days. They all assured me that there would be foreigners showing up and that I should have no problem finding a group to join. They also told me that I would be best to go on the final safari of the day, the 3:30 to 6:30 one. That was when the animals would be coming back out. I had already missed the first one of the day, and the second one was in the early heat. Many of the animals would have gone to ground by then. They also said they would be on the lookout for anyone, and I should come back at 2:00 for the registration period.

Well, this was going to be my one shot at it, so I figured I may as well hang about. I did have the problem of having about five hours to kill while waiting. Next to the application office was an interpretive center. I went in there and read the whole set of panels with information about the park. It was, once again, done really well. I am impressed by the information provided by national parks and other spots of natural beauty. I am less impressed with how many people don't read any of it when they visit the spots.

While I was in the interpretive center, a man came in looking for me. His name was Nitin. He told me there were a couple of people interested in going on a safari that afternoon and asked if I would be wanting to go. He owned a guest house in the area and seemed to be something of an arranger of these sorts of things. (I was annoyed to find so many guest houses in the little town. On the internet, I had only found a couple that were quite expensive. Had I known there were a lot of guest houses, I would have gone on further from Junagadh and come to Sasan, just outside the lion sanctuary instead. Oh well. This is the difficulty of travelling without a guide of any sort to help find these things out.) I told him yes, and he told me to come see him later to find out the score. I said I would.

After leaving the interpretive center, I met Nitin again on the street. He told me it was coming together and to meet him again at this hotel at 12:30 to find out for sure.

I went off to see a couple of other things in the neighbourhood. One was the crocodile farm. It turned out to be not very interesting. There were a few small crocodiles in cages, but very little information and nobody around to talk to.

So then I headed to the train station. At the train station, I sat and watched for a while. There were a couple of trains that were due in over the next few minutes and the small country train station with a train coming seemed like it might be a fairly picturesque setting and photo. It was.

There were also a number of parrots about squawking and making lots of noise.

Around a quarter past noon, I headed back into town. I went to the hotel where I could find Nitin. He had told me he would take me to his home stay guest house for lunch. I really wish I had known how easy it would be to stay in the little town. Junagadh wasn't bad, but it was a long way to go for a day trip. Nitin took me to his home and I met one of his guests, Andrew from Australia. He was going to go on the safari that afternoon. We had lunch, I gave Nitin 1500 rupees to take care of the matter of the park permit and camera permit and guide and jeep. He had told me that there would be four people on the safari. I worked it out in my head that, with all the costs and taking care of it on our own (if we could have somehow met up and made a foursome ourselves, that is), it would have cost 1250. So he was getting a sizable commission out of the deal. But fair enough, he had cultivated the contacts with guides and other people around town to be able to put people together when they would just wander up to town to take a safari, as I had. And 30 dollars for the experience seemed quite reasonable, so...

After lunch, Nitin and I headed back to the hotel where we had met at noon. Nitin took my passport to make the arrangements and I settled down to get some of my writing done on my computer. Around 3:15, Nitin came back with a jeep and a guide and picked me up. He gave me my passport back. I set it down for a second while I got myself arranged, and he reminded me to make sure I kept it with me. I'm not sure why he would think I would forget something like my passport. More than most any other country I have visited, I seem to need my passport at every turn, from registering in hotels to using internet cafes to booking train tickets to getting permits for various activities. And if that isn't enough, it's my only identification at the moment. I'm not about to let it be too far from me without knowing exactly where it is. I guess there must be people that he knows of who have carelessly left their passports lying about and had them disappear. I hope I'm never that foolish.

We got in the jeep and went to the ticketing area and picked up Andrew and a couple from Belgium who rounded out the foursome. Nitin stepped out of the vehicle and let our guide in and we were off. We entered the park and proceeded along one of the paths. Andrew asked which path we were following and we were told it was route 3 and part of route 4. It didn't really matter to me. Even if I were going into the park several times over the course of a few days, I likely wouldn't recognize anything well enough to say where we were and what route we might be following. But I had seen a sign at the interpretive center showing the various routes. So I guess knowing might have been helpful. Perhaps it mattered more to Andrew and the Belgian couple as they had all been on a jeep trip in the early morning and maybe they didn't want to trace the same route again.

Initially it was just a nice park to be in. There was lots of tree cover. The roads were in pretty good condition as well. I was also quite impressed with how well maintained the jeeps were. They ran very quietly, so would be unlikely to be too much of a disturbance to the animals. Of course, they can still hear a vehicle coming a long ways off, but there are people living in the park, so I think the animals must be reasonably easy around people.

We started off fairly slowly. There were a few birds, including a peacock. I have to say that it is still quite thrilling when I see even something as normal as a bird, but that I would only normally experience in captivity in a zoo or bird park. But here peacocks run around in the wild and it's still a bit odd.

There were other birds as well, but the only one I know the name of is the common kingfisher. When it flies, its back is fully visible and is a very bright, light blue colour.

We also saw some monkeys. This fellow was sitting very relaxed in the tree, until another jeep pulled up rather noisily and then he was off into the trees.

Natural there were also the meals for the lions and other predators in the park. Oh, I'm sorry. I should say, there were lots of spotted deer as well. There were some sambar (another, larger kind of deer) that we saw as well, but they were too hidden in the trees to get a clear photo.

We even saw a small crocodile, sitting by a waterhole. That was quite nice. I don't know how big these suckers get, but it was still a wild crocodile.

As for the lions, we went for about an hour without any sort of hint of a lion. Andrew told me that in the Gir National Park the odds of seeing a lion are about 1 in 2. That's pretty good odds, but we were beginning to despair. Suddenly we passed a jeep going the opposite direction and the people inside called across to us to watch to the left. I wasn't sure whether they had meant ours or theirs, but I didn't need to worry. A couple of bends in the road later, we saw a bunch of jeeps all stopped on the road and lots of cameras pointed to our left. We got in on the act and...

I wasn't actually as close as some of these photos suggest. I love my new camera.

On the right hand side of the road, there was a lone young male lion as well.

We had happened on something of a mother lode of lions. In this group there were probably 8 to 10 lions, all but one were female. There were mothers, cute babies, and some older young lions as well. In the Gir National Park there were 411 lions at last count. This group represented about 2 percent of that entire lion count.

Satisfied! I had gotten to see some big, wild cats. Maybe I can try tigers again in Rajasthan.

We headed off to see more of the park. Then the guides heard about another group of lions farther on in the park. We raced in that direction. If there were any other animals hanging out in the jungle, we weren't going to be seeing them. We were going too fast to be able to notice them, I think.

We arrived at the second location a short while later and there was indeed a second group of lions, about 5 to 7 of them, lying about in the grasses. Now we had seen about 4 percent of the population of lions in the park. Were we ever lucky!!!

Doubly satisfied, we headed back towards the park gates, marvelling at our luck this day. Andrew did remark to me that he would like to see a leopard leaping on and killing a deer. I told him not to be too greedy, but I guess it would be kind of neat to see something like that.

Along the way, we got to see the sun going down over the Gir National Park.

Once back at the park warden's office, I went in to the gift shop and bought a t-shirt with a lion outlined on it. I figured that I would commemorate my successful viewing visit to the park with a souvenir that was more than just photos. And the money goes towards helping the lions and people of the community live in harmony.

Then it was out to the road to await a bus to go back to Junagadh. I had had a great day, but I did find a couple of things quite frustrating. One is the fee structure for visiting the park. I do realize they are protecting the park. They actually limit visitors inside the park to 180 at any given time. There are three safari times each day so that means that a total of 540 visitors each day can go into the national park. But if someone tries to visit the national park as I did, alone, the cost of the visit is quite difficult to justify. And the cost to visit is different for foreigners and for Indian nationals. This makes it impossible to mix foreign visitors with Indian nationals in the same jeep. (This is in contrast to Kaziranga where I easily joined a group of Indian nationals on their jeep safari. Kaziranga has individual permits, rather than group permits.)

In addition, there is so little information to go on about visiting the town and being to stay there. Of course, the flip side of that is that if there is more information then more people will go and be there and it will more and more difficult to accommodate the growing number of visitors seeking to get a glimpse of the lions.

Finally, there are probably dark days ahead for the park. One of the guides told me that there are now instances of lions leaving the park and seeking food among the livestock of surrounding farms. The number of incidences of human/lion (or leopard or other predator) conflict will rise as that continues. The park is reaching its capacity for the number of lions that it can support and the lions have to move out to find enough food. But there is development all around the park. The wildlife authorities are going to have a very difficult time finding a way to expand the size of the park as a result. The lion has been successfully brought back from the brink, but that very success is threatened because the park is now too small. In addition, there are native people living in the park. Their agricultural practices are at odds with the way the forest naturally works and this further threatens the park and its natural animal inhabitants. How these problems will be addressed is unclear, but what is clear is that some solutions will need to be found in fairly short order if the Asiatic lion is to continue to thrive.