Visit to the zoo . . .

Both of my kids give high regards for a visit to the zoo whenever we visit any town. Over the last 5 days, we visited 2 zoos in the country. Well, the first one we visited was the Alipur zoo (Kolkota) - it was one of the worst days to visit and therefore I would not comment much on it. We were warned well in advance about the possibility of a heavy rush. We got the entrance tickets quite luckily.

When we reached the zoo, the queue for the tickets was almost half a mile long and we had almost made up our minds to postpone the visit to another time. So, we came to the entrance and was about to go ahead to catch a taxi back to where we stayed. Out of blue came a zoo employee and started announcing that 2 new ticket counters were being started. My knowledge of a bit of Bengali served us well.

I found myself standing in a new counter with not many people. The people in the main queue were mostly sleepy waiting for their turn and it took some time for most of the crowd to realise that there were 2 more new queues.

However, on going inside, I realised that it was going to be tough. Visitors had occupied almost every inch of space inside. And moving was quite tough. However, we were quite impressed with the giraffes which made up for the disappointment we had about not being able to see the entire zoo.

And one snap to give you an imagination of how large the crowd was - I felt quite sad for the animals who were being heckled in almost all enclosures.

And yesterday night, Shalom remembered about the zoo at Trivandrum, my home town. It was not easy to deny the request. And so, we were off late morning.

And wow, it was a delight. The zoo has been spruced up quite a lot after we had visited last June. The rules about plastic usage had become very strict. The ticket collectors at the gate were very adamant they would not allow any amount of plastic to get into the zoo. I really appreciate the plastic free policy in the Trivandrum zoo.

Angel, Shalom and Charis trying to pose with the Vulture.

Cannon Ball Tree Flower

The owl who thought I was trying to steal his lunch.

One of Shalom's favorite birds - stork.

Probably the croc waiting for the birds to make the wrong move

The last time I visited, this paved area used to be quite muddy

Bats roosting. Wish I had a high end camera with lens to zoom

One of the ponds filled with water hyacinth. Quite a beautiful sight.

Both the langurs we saw were quite shy. Maybe, they got the message that we come from langur land.

(NJH has quite a large langur population)

The emu who gave us quite a hard and long stare.

Shalom's favorite animal - the zebra.

Appointment with the tiger. The most sought after. Shalom and Charis insisted that they see the tigers, leopards and the lions twice. Charis even waved goodbye to most of them.

Snap of the day.

The ostriches... By the time we reached here, we were dead tired. Then, there is quite a good collection of parakeets and macaws of amazing colours. I could not get snaps of them as they were quite deep inside their enclosures.

Then, there is a good collection of snakes. And outside the zoo, there is a pretty acquarium with a good collection.

Well, we had a great time. Watch out for photographs from the beach which we plan to visit sometime during the next 5 days here at Trivandrum.