Going Local – A Visit To The Delhi Zoo

It has been on my agenda for quite a while that I should start a category called Going Local on Travel Tales, with posts on our very own Delhi, which has a lot to offer in terms of tourist spots and activities, as well as a rich cultural heritage. And so I finally got around to it today, starting with the Delhi Zoo.

The Delhi Zoo was a place that I had visited in my childhood a few times – a couple of times as part of a school-organised trip, and once with an uncle of mine. This would have been in the early 1970s when I was still in junior school.

My next visit there was sometime in 1992. My wife Rani & I, accompanied by our friends, Laveena & Sanjay. And with us, we had our toddlers – our daughter Nandini & Sahil – the son of Laveena & Sanjay. Both kids were born a couple of months apart and we took them in a pram.

Yes, the Four Musketeers have been gallivanting together for some 30 years now ?. I dug out these pictures from 1992 from my album to remind me of that trip.

Fast forward to 10 February 2019. No, I don’t have the memory of an elephant. I remember the date courtesy Google Photos, which backs up photos date-wise, and the pictures that I am going to share below have been downloaded from there.

We had met a day before that. The Surajkund Crafts Mela was going on around that time. Both the ladies wanted to visit there. Both the guys were not so inclined. And so it was decided that the ladies would go on their own in a cab and we guys would go visit the zoo. And why the zoo ? Well, no particular reason, except that I wanted to try my hand at animal photography and Sanjay was game enough to tag along. And so it was decided that the ladies and the guys would go their separate ways. The plan was to start early and finish by around lunch time. And then we would all meet up at Pandara Road and have lunch together.

The plan worked perfectly and we arrived at the National Zoological Park, a.k.a. the Delhi Zoo after sending the ladies in a cab to Surajkund. It was a perfect day to visit. It was still winter and the day was bright and clear – perfect conditions for photography. And some of the migratory water-birds which arrive there annually were still around.

It was certainly a nostalgic trip, to say the least. Childhood memories of the school picnic came flooding back as we made our way inside the park.  I must say that over the years, the park has improved tremendously. It is much more cleaner than I remembered it from my last visit in 1992. And there has been some expansion. The facilities have improved. The overall environment is good and very green. The lawns at the entrance are manicured and well maintained and the fountains are impressive. There are more public toilets as well, spread across the park. And for those who have a problem walking, there is a battery-operated cart service to take you around. We preferred to walk and cover the park at our own pace.

One thing that saddened me was that we humans still haven’t learnt our lessons when it comes to littering. The place was crowded and despite the best efforts of the cleaning staff people were still throwing stuff around carelessly. The below picture of a monkey trying to drink from a carelessly discarded plastic bottle of a soft drink says it all. We still have a long way to go before we can get our act together.

The Delhi Zoo Through My Lens

I won’t go too much into the details of the visit, since I am sure most of my readers are familiar with zoos. Let me just share some pictures that I clicked there. Clicking the animals in open enclosures was relatively easy – they were there in plain view. The difficult part was clicking those animals which were behind wire-mesh fencing. While my camera is relatively good – though not a professional one – and it did blur out the mesh fencing, the result was that some of the pictures were not as sharp as I would have liked. Nevertheless, here are the images.

Sadly, we could not visit the reptile house, as this was their hibernation period and it was closed to visitors till summer. But we certainly enjoyed our stroll through the park, clicking pictures at random. We lost all track of time, till we got a call from the ladies informing us that they were on their way back from Surajkund, and that we too should wind up our trip and make our way to Pandara Road to join them for lunch.

And leave we did, but it was definitely a day well spent. I wouldn’t mind doing it again. What about you ? Do you enjoy visiting the zoo, and when was the last time you visited ?