Sasan Gir

To find majestic lions prowling around freely, Gir park is that the only place within the world besides the jungles of Africa. the whole forest of the park is dry and deciduous and is thus the perfect habitat for the Asiatic lion. Besides lions, leopards are the most attraction of the park. Other wildlife one can spot are sambar deer, chowsingha (the world’s only four-horned antelope), jackal, India fox, hyena etc. Moreover, the park invites birdwatchers for its quite 200 species of avifauna. a number of the prominent are the endangered white-backed and long-billed vultures. The forest is additionally home to quite 40 species of reptiles and amphibians. to identify Marsh crocodiles in large numbers, one can visit the Kamleshwar reservoir within the sanctuary. a number of the snakes that reside here are the hamadryad , the saw-scaled viper, the krait and Russell’s viper.

Spread over a neighborhood of 1,412 sq km, the park features a core area of about 258 sq km. it’s located about 65 km south-east of Junagadh and was notified as a wildlife sanctuary on September 18, 1965, to conserve the Asiatic lion. While the lions were completely exhausted from other parts of Asia, the indiscriminate hunting by the people of Junagadh led to a fall in their numbers in Gir. The Nawabs of Junagadh protected the lions in their hunting grounds, then the Forest Department took over. From a population of about 20 lions in 1913, the numbers rose to about 523 in 2015.