Blackbuck Country

Velavadar Blackbuck National Park, in the Bhal grasslands near Bhavnagar, is one of India’s finest grassland sanctuaries — a rare protected expanse of golden savanna teeming with wildlife. The park is famous above all for the blackbuck, the elegant Indian antelope, seen here in large numbers — the males with their spiralling horns and dark-and-white coats, leaping and racing across the open plains in one of India’s great wildlife spectacles. But Velavadar is far more: it shelters the Indian wolf, the striped hyena, jackals and jungle cats, and it is renowned among birders for hosting one of the world’s largest roosts of harriers (migratory raptors) in winter, as well as the rare and endangered lesser florican, which performs its leaping courtship display here in the monsoon. The flat, open grasslands — rare and threatened in India — give Velavadar a unique character, beautiful at dawn and dusk when the light turns the savanna gold and the animals are most active. For the visitor, Velavadar offers a superb and uncrowded wildlife experience close to Bhavnagar — best in the cool season, on early-morning or evening safaris. (Velavadar Blackbuck National Park near Bhavnagar; grassland wildlife — blackbuck, wolf, harriers; best Oct–Mar on safari.)