Taken by surprise at Gir
Rupin Dang

I expected something totally different when I reached the Gir National Park in Gujarat. I had always sported a rather grim view of the Asiatic Lion as a species, and all lions in general. Put in one word, they were lazy - plain lazy. They sat around and slept all day, while one poor energetic female did all the hunting for the pride, and the highlight of the day was the feast after which the entire pride proceeded to sleep some more. Seeing the lions was probably very easy, as after all, they just sat around, I assumed. They didn't roam much, I thought, and so all one had to do was drive up to them, shoot off a few rolls of film, and head out. The pictures one often sees generally show sickly animals with large injuries on their shoulders and haunches, and flies festering on them...

What I learnt on visiting Gir was that I was wrong, very very wrong. And I owe an apology to the Asiatic Lion for this insult to the royal lineage... I learnt that the lion can be as stealthy and secretive as a tiger, as healthy, muscular and swift as a leopard, and as difficult to sight as either a leopard or a tiger. And contrary to popular belief, lions don't just sit around and shoot the breeze - they love to frequent dense ravines and undergrowth, they roam extensively, they wallow in pools, and can also be very independent and individualistic, not always subscribing to an existence as a pride.

All this came as a surprise to me, as did Gir National Park itself. Once again, riddled with common misconceptions bred by books on Indian wildlife, I had presumed Gir as an extended parkland, of the kind one finds either in African open savannah country or else in a well-kept city zoo! Quite to the contrary, Gir proved to be truly wild countryside, consisting largely of stretches of fairly thick deciduous forests and thorn scrub jungles, spread across a landscape of undulating hills and occasional water bodies.

It may sound hard to believe but the Asiatic Lion used to be so common and widespread through north India that a Colonel George Ackland Smith of the British Indian Army actually shot over 300 of them, more than 50 of which were obtained in the immediate neighbourhood of Delhi! This was at the time of the Mutiny of 1857. Soon after, the lion population started slipping and by the end of the nineteenth century, the only known population remained within the Gir forest in the royal state of Junagadh in Gujarat.

To see the lion at Gir today, one must make it to Sasan Gir, which is rather difficult of access. Either you fly in to the tiny airport at the 86 km. distant town of Keshod, which is accessible by a flight from Bombay, or else you drive down from Ahmedabad, or take a train to Sasan Gir itself, as this is a railway station on the metre gauge line of the Western Railway. Accommodation is available in the form of a well-appointed Forest Rest House that must be booked in advance from the office of The Deputy Conservator of Forests and Wildlife at Sasan Gir, Gujarat. Or else one can stay at either the Taj resort or one of several private lodges in the vicinity of the park.

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