TOUCHING THE KING  AND EXPLORING THE WILD.

Have you ever thought, what would it be like to touch a lion, the king of the jungle?

You would say- touching a lion? yeah sure, if you want to get eaten alive.

It is not like that, a lion whose stomach is full, is at peace mentally and physically would never attack a human. Animals are not as dangerous and unpredictable as we think. Of course, if we go out of our way to annoy or torture them, they will surely attack. That is natural. If acted with and interacted gently, animals can be very gentle too. In this blog of mine, i will talk about what i experienced when i traveled to the land of Africa where a huge population of animals reside. I visited many national parks where animals roam freely in their natural habitat and humans go and explore. 

This is the best way to view these majestic beings. Locking them up in cages is not the best way. They had very strict rules at the Kruger national park of Africa. During the safari, where they took us to view the animals in their habitat, we had to maintain total silence and not use sound or flash on our cameras.

I was very impressed about how they cared so much about all the animals in the park. 

We took  lot of pictures of so many animals. The first animal we saw was a giraffe.

Giraffes are absolutely lovely creatures from what i experienced in the national park. 

They are truly gentle and really calm animals. Surprisingly, they approached our jeep to say hello. We fed them some grass the rangers gave us too.

The giraffes then started sniffing our hair and the jeep. They were curious of what we wore, ate and clicked photos with.

Next we encountered a pack of hyenas. It is not safe to go too close to them as mentioned by our ranger, but thankfully we had a camera with a really good zoom lens.

As soon as we got close to the hyenas, The kids ran away to safety from natural instinct as baby animals tend to be scared of everything.

The other hyenas did not bother us hanging around. They casually walked around and slept on the brown grass.

Next we encountered the gentle giants which are not just called gentle, they are extremely gentle and playful. As we were sitting in the jeep, one of the elephants approached us and smelled the jeep thoroughly with its trunk. All the animals seemed incredibly curious of humans. The elephants were fun to experience.

We encountered many other carnivorous animals like the cheetah, lions, hyenas and we were fortunate enough to spot a leopard too. But as it was night time and too dark, we could manage to get a photo.

The lions on that day seemed quite lazy. They just lay around and slept. I guess they had a good meal.

Cheetahs are very active and as expected, This one was on a hunt. The animals don't attack the humans as they see us as visitors and often stay cautious.

We encountered many beautiful herbivores too like the dears, zebras. We also saw many birds.  

Next we went to another park full of monkeys all in their natural habitat. There were some rules to be followed there too. We could not carry food with us as monkeys are always hungry. We also could not carry bracelets and necklaces as monkeys have a keen sense of style. Hahaha.

Monkeys do act kind of funny sometimes.

They would come close to us, Touch our clothes and then immediately run away. They were curious and scared at the same time.

Now, who can mention Africa without mentioning ostriches.

We saw and fed the ostriches closely. It was a fun experience. They are extremely big and very playful.

You must be wondering that what is with that title, " touching the king" We haven't seen anything like that yet. Well, you reading this blog till here has payed off. I visited a place where they kept some animals who were week, too young or needed medical help of some sort. They were physically and mentally treated in a very good way there and as soon as they were all right, they were released in the wild. I am very impressed from the work they are doing. 

The place had an activity called lion petting for kids and adults. That is where i touched the king, the king of the jungle. The lion.

I felt so good, touching a lion the king of the jungle. There were rangers with us the whole time to instruct us about where to pet it so the lion would feel good.

The lion i petted in the above picture was a teenage lion. It was a calm and friendly lion. They all seemed properly taken care of and each animal had a strong bond of love with the rangers who took care of them before they were released in the wild. Until they were released in the wild, they were never kept in rooms and cages, they had a huge open space to stay and thrive.

They had another activity of petting the lion cubs who were just babies and they were too vulnerable as their mother had sadly died in the wild due to a disease. They were the cutest animals i had ever seen!!

The cubs were hesitant at first but eventually became comfortable with me holding them.

I continued to stroke the cub gently until it fell asleep on my lap.

I really hope you like this blog and enjoyed listening to my story about my trip to various animal parks in Africa. The photo credit goes to my father.

Stay tuned for another amazing blog like this and feel free to drop any suggestion you would like to give me about my blogs.                  I will see you next time, Until then, stay happy and stay safe.

Thank you.