We arrived at Junagadh station and set off for the Gir national park, only stopping at the Maqbara tomb with spiral minarets pictured above and which also impressed the goat!
Gir is the last haven in the world for the Asiatic lion in the wild and there are currently just over 400 of them in 1150 square km. The Asiatic lion is actually pretty similar to the African lion for most intents and purposes but slightly smaller and paler. Access to the park is rather limited but we were lucky enough to get two permits for early morning safaris when we there, the fact that the very few Westerners around had to pay a premium rate may have been more than a coincidence!
As you can see from above our outings were successful and we saw a total of four lionesses and three beautiful cubs. But no lion king! We also got a brief glimpse of a camera-shy leopard, plus later an excellent nature walk by the river next to the hotel at sunset. We were lucky enough to have a complete anorak as a guide and he was particularly good at identifying birds and fooling them with recordings of their species on his mobile phone!
The only downside to our stay here was they we both came down with Delhi belly! Ironic that this happened, as often seems to be the case in our general experience, at one of the most expensive hotels of our trip! Now off to the seaside......
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