Keyur Patel

English 1101-012
Place Profile

Best Place on Earth - The Forest of Sasan Gir

As I got off the car, the sign reads 'You are entering the great place of Asiatic
Lions (The Last Home)'. Gir's popularity is because of the lions that reside their. When I
arrived there for a camping trip it was drizzling, the rain cooled the hot, dry deciduous
forest, the surrounding had a pleasant smell of baked mud. Birds were chirping on the
trees of the entrance. To enter the forest there is a visitors fee of 1000 INR. After
completing the legal work I started the trip.
Its geographical location is in Junagadh a district of Gujarat, India. The forest is
located after a mountain called Girnar. The name of the mountain gave the forest its
name Gir. The mountain place is like a face of a human being, and the stretch of forest
on the other side of the mountain is the hairs of that face, locals believe it as 'Girnari
Baba' the Saint of Girnar. These Saints never cut their beard or their hairs, signifying the
long stretch of the forest.
There are the tribes that resides inside the forest with the wild animals forming
their villages. I had an opportunity camping near the village of a tribe called 'Maldhari'.
These people were friendly. They speak Gujarati, same language as I do, but their
ascent is too different from the rest of the Gujarat. The men of the tribe wear 'dhoti and
kurta' and the women wear 'sari'. They live without electricity, and gas fuel to cook the
food. The light their little homes with handmade lamps and cook food on the dry woods
collected by the women of the village. Their means of transportation is bullock cart or

horse cart. They are not afraid of the wild animals. Group of men stay awake at night
and patrol around the village with 'latthis' sticks and not guns, they don't believe in killing
the animals but protecting them. Also, at night the fire lamps are lit at the border of their
village. For their survival they collect the forest produce and sell it to a nearby town of
Talala na Veraval. They own some herds of animals like sheep, cows, buffaloes,
camels, horses, etc. All the families live here like a big family, helping each other and
sorting their problems.
My trip begins with the setting up the camp near the village of Maldhari tribe.
Than we started the tracking into a small section of the forest with a guide, where wild
animals are less in number. We watched herds of deer, 'nilgai', wild pigs, etc. We also
got close to a small pride of lions with one male, four females and three cubs. But the
sad part was that the pride of the lion was on the other side of the fence where visitors
can't go tracking. The next day we went to the main sanctuary to take a close look with
lions in a eco friendly bus running on electricity. I spent the third day with the tribe and
on fourth day we explored the fauna of the region. I visited their more than five times but
I always see something new at Gir