Lions, Tigers, Bears…Oh my!!

Yesterday I went on a very bumpy safari ride. No, I was not riding an elephant, camel or any such animal. It was actually just a small bus. One which the driver drove like a maniac up and down the mountains and through a forested area with disregard for the animals which may lay on the roads ahead. He even drove the bus right off the path into the brush so we could get a better look at a white tiger, which hid in the corner trying to avoid our glares and camera flashes. We saw a couple of fuzzy bears, tigers, lionesses, elephants, hippopotami, king cobras, lots of monkeys and more. The tigers were definitely the most beautiful to me. They looked so undernourished though. Maybe they’ve been put on a restricted diet since one snatched a little girl from a bus not too long ago. Another one of those very sad stories I’ve heard here. Luckily, since that incident, they have installed wire grids on the outside of the windows of the buses with small holes to stick your camera through to get a good shot. Which reminds me of another thing: It cost my camera almost as much as it cost me to board the bus! I’ve never heard of such a thing. Along the safari we came to different animal entrapments. Before entering, the bus drove us into a cage, a man closed the gate behind us and then came and opened the gate in front of us to prevent the animals from leaving/entering their determined areas. With the bars on the windows and the enclosed cages it almost felt as if we were the ones trapped and put on display.