Like the leapord, the rest of the city was blanketed inside the heavy showers – sleeping. And I for one found out that Leopards are solitary animals except during mating season. Then again if you sleep for sixteen hours a day, you’ll mostly end up solitary, ha lonely.
Visiting Trivandrum Zoo after close to a decade, I gave one round of appaluse to the Kerala Government for the way they have transformed the zoo. The nameboards speak of a painstaking redesign of the facility over the past decade which seems to have paid off now. Almost every animal (birds, reptiles excluded) is now housed in large open enclosures. The overall design is very impressive and aesthetic, though I didn’t understand why two lion tailed monkeys need almost half an acre of space (that too at Trivandrum Zero).
While the monsoon made the place look a bit intimidating with the tall tall trees and the waters in the lakes, more intimidating was the wait for the animals to emerge and show their un-evolutionised faces to people with tickets. With the new design, the item public, me included, had to wait till the primitive and highly egoistic animals emerged from their caves and other hideouts to catch a glimpse. Overall the place looks just great, and to see it in the monsoon is surely a bonus. More snaps on the stream
been ages since i went there. used to be a fav haunt back in the days when i cld still gape open mouthed at a giraffe ;)may be next time…
Brahma,
I am sure this would have been a wonderful experience.
I am doing this next time in Trivandrum! Damn, I saw your FB status late, else could have joined you.
These name boards are the place where I learnt the actual meaning of the word habitat.Somehow the description in primary school text books did not suffice as an explanation to me.
-Nikhil
alakananda, had fun, the monsoon is the best time though
Nikhil, overall the place looks so different, and so well managed. but yeah…the number of lion, tiger and other ‘enemy’ animals have gone donwn though 🙂
BVN – as a foreigner who has been to quite a few Indian zoos I am always very impressed with the Trivandrum zoo. The animals seem fairly well-adjusted (not too much pacing behaviour like you sometimes seem in zoos with enclosures that are too small) and the people visiting always seem a cut above too. I don’t know how many times I have had to bite my tongue in other zoos in India when people throw food, stones and other objects at the animals or – and this was truly alarming – place their small children on the ground INSIDE the guardrails where a tiger or lion could have easily killed them through the bars of its cage should it have wanted to. So kudos to the zoo-going Malayalis!
A highlight of the zoo for me is always the huge population of fruit bats (I presume that is what they are) in the tall trees you speak of. Did you notice them?