When you visit Gir National Park, you expect to see Asiatic Lions living in their natural habitat; you expect beautiful migratory birds; and if you're really optimistic, a couple of leopards would make the perfect day.

However, on my third trip to the Asiatic Lion Paradise, we failed to spot any of these. Having seen lions on both of my previous visits, not being able to spot even a single one after three safaris was disappointing, to say the least. However, just as we were about to exit the forest, disappointed and tired, we saw a bizarre scenario.

A little less than twenty metres away from our open jeep, about a hundred monkeys were determined to make our safari worthwhile by putting on a little monkey escapade. Intrigued, we decided to stay for a while and watch these primates. During the thirty minutes that we stayed, we saw a monkey gang fight, almost witnessed a monkey childbirth, and just looked at the way this troop of monkeys played and horsed around. I quickly took out my camera and clicked a few photos of these branch swingers, and this is my favourite one: three apparent siblings fooling around. So even though the trip wasn't a total success, it wasn't a total failure either, thanks to some monkey business ;)