Animals and hotels have often gone together. Some hotel brands, such as Loews, Westin, Kimpton and Aloft are very pet-friendly. For other hotels, such as the Peabody in Memphis, animals are part of what makes them famous. Many hotels have one or more animals as mascots of sorts, such as Gino at the Volcano Village Lodge or the turtles and birds at the Hyatt Centric Key West Resort & Spa. And this hotel has a cat that’s an official employee.
Sometimes though, an animal will be on hotel premises and it’s definitely not supposed to be there. I don’t mean self-important people who decide to smuggle their Yorkie in for an overnight stay. I’m talking local dogs, cats, squirrels or birds that make their way inside.
And then there was the time that a lion wandered onto a hotel’s property.
Yes, a lion.
Security cameras at a hotel in India, the Sarovar Portico hotel in Junagadh, Gujarat, captured video of the unusual visitor, an Asiatic lion, as it entered the grounds and wandered the premises.
The video first shows the big cat entering the property by jumping over a short gate. It then walked around the main building of the hotel and checked out the parking lot before leaving,
All told, the lion wasn’t on the property very long; only about a minute or so.
“The watchman at the gate was alert and stayed quiet as the lion entered the hotel premises,” Sanjay Koradia, the managing partner of Sarovar Portico Hotel in Junagadh told The Indian Express. “Through intercom, he alerted other staff members about the presence of the animal in the hotel and asked them to keep doors and windows shut.”
Koridia said there weren’t any confrontations between the lion and humans on the hotel grounds.
“The CCTV footage suggests that the lion had apparently lost its way and left the hotel premises soon after finding that it was going in the wrong direction. No untoward incident was reported,” Koradia said.
Koridia said several guests were staying at the hotel at the time of the lion’s visit, but since it was so early in the morning (right around 5:04 am), most were still in their rooms, sleeping.
Feature Photo: Sumeet Moghe / Wikimedia
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
