Daroji wild life sanctuary has been my favorite place for seeing and photographing Indian Sloth Bears.. Daroji sanctuary is about 364 Km from Bangalore, via Chitradurga, Hospet and further Kamalapur. We stayed at Karnataka government’s tourist guesthouse ( KSTDC’s Mayur Bhuvaneshwari ) at Kamalapura. This is quite a comfortable place to stay and just 12 Km for Daroji.

Daroji  was declared as a Wild life Sanctuary during October 1994. We owe so much to the persons who identified the potential of this place and took steps to protect the Indian sloth Bears.

The sanctuary expands for about 55.87 square kilometers consisting of small hillocks amidst scrub forest. Natural caves found in these hillocks provide comfortable stay for the bears.

This shot was made during March, 2007, late in the evening, using Canon 1Ds Mark 1 with 300mm f/4 lens.  Shutter @ 1/125, Aperture @f/8 at ISO 320.

Wild boars are common in the periphery of forests and jungles. These animals prefer to live closer to villages and agricultural lands. It used to invade cultivated lands such as sugar cane fields etc.,These wild animals are well known for their notorious behavior of damaging the crops . But I shot this image in a Daroji Sloth Bear sanctuary. Daroji is about 15 K.M from HAMPI town, which was once the capital of Vijayanagar Empire.

Daroji is a rocky terrain and very hot. The summer is simply unbearable. The rock-strewn hillocks that stretch between Daroji of Sandur taluk and Ramasagar of Hospet Taluk in Bellary district have been the abode of Indian Sloth Bears  since ages. In October 1994, the government of of

Karnataka declared 5,587.30 hectares of Bilikallu reserve forest as Daroji Bear Sanctuary.

I took this image on March 2007. I used canon 1Ds Mark I (11.8 MP) camera with 300mm f/4 lens mounted. ISO as 200, Shutter at 1/250 and aperture at f/8.