My wife is new to the city. The one thing I do on the weekend is familiarizing her around the Kathmandu city, the capital of Nepal. It will take a long time to fully explore the city for her and this is just the starting. This was also her first tour in the city and I took her to the central zoo located in Jawlakhel, Lalitpur, Nepal. It had already been like 11-12 years the last time I went to the zoo. And as long as I remember, I went there as a part of school excursion. I was feeling pretty excited while visiting there again with my wife to see what changes have been made in more than a decade and to see if they brought more animals, birds or other species to the zoo. To my surprise, it was like what I visited 11 years ago with some very few changes.
This is the first and the only one zoo in Nepal. It was built around 90 years ago when Nepal was under the autocratic rule of Rana regime. There are total of 942 species of mammals and birds and a total of 127 species of fish and reptiles. In 1995, the government of Nepal handed the zoo to The National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC) who had been taking care of the zoo and the animals since then. This organization is the major organization that carries out activites related to nature conservation in whole of Nepal. The zoo falls under one of the must visit place in Kathmandu.
I made a plan to go there on Sunday as the zoo is overcrowded especially during Saturday as it is holiday here. When I went there yesterday, it was crowded with children that came as a part of school picnic and excursion. The number of adults visiting there yesterday was low. I couldn't visit there peacefully due to the long queue of children watching the animals and enjoying them. Many schools had taken the children studying in lower level to the zoo. And you can imagine, how NTNC had been able to keep the animals here in zoo by making their own natural habitat inside the zoo. The main revenue comes from the entrance fee that is charged while entering inside the zoo. I had to pay a total of Nepalese 400 Rupees which is approx $3.65 for two. There is separate price for entering into the zoo for children, adult, senior citizen, foreign and people from SAARC countries. You can see the price in their official website here: https://ntnc.org.np/project/central-zoo
When you enter into the zoo from the gate, this is the first view that you will see.
And the first animal that one can see just after entering is the Gharial Crocodile. It was also at the verge of getting endangered mainly due to the benefits in its eggs for food and medicine. NTCN has worked in protecting the species by setting a breeding center in another district of Nepal i.e. Chitwan where they keep the eggs and hatch it after taking away from the Gharial nest. They hatch the eggs under same natural condition the mother hatch their eggs. In the photo below, you can see the gharial sleeping in the bank of the pond.
I clicked every photos from my smartphone and not every photos clicked came out pretty good. There were lot of reasons for the improper shots of the animals. Firstly, the chain link fence was kept to keep animal inside. And we have to observe them from some distance from the fence. Due to this I had to zoom in and click the photos. Another reason was due to a lot of crowd of children hovering over the fence, I couldn't take nice shot and the shots were also hindered by the sunlight and the shadow. But, I tried my best in taking the shots. And lastly most of the animals won't turn towards you due to the crowd. They will either turn their back showing their butts馃ぃ馃槀 or go inside their cave/home.
Next after the gharial crocodiles, I enjoyed watching the following animals walking around. On the side of the fence where respective animals were kept, there was a small board that provides the useful information related to that animal like their scientific name, distribution, habitat and so on.
Spotted Deer
Blue Bull
Like I said earlier look at this one, turning back and not caring who are coming to visit them lol 馃ぃ. Naughty creature.
Wild Boar aka Wild Pig
Next there was another animals on the endangered list as per IUCN- the one horned rhino that has only single horn and has been declining due to overgrazing and humal settlement. I was pretty amazed by its weight. 2000 kg: oh my goodness!!
Hippopotamus
Another naughty creature. It was eating the moment I went to see it and while returning back it was again eating-big fatto hippy. You will sense a tremednous smell around it when you go to visit it.
Common Leopard
This is one of the main attraction here in the zoo. Everyone loves watching these wild creature inside the zoo. I was also pretty excited to see them here.
This is among the favorite of all visitors coming to the zoo- The Royal Bengal Tiger, the national animals of India and Bangladesh. It is also on the list of endangered species since its population had been declining ever since due to poaching and loss of habitat. There are currently 4 royal bengal tigers here in the zoo. In one of the cave, I couldn't see two of them. However, I could notice the tail of the tiger and it was sleeping during that time inside the cave.
However, another cave was built for the tiger with the idea of allowing visitors to see the tiger. There were two of them in that cave. Again they were far distance and the shadow of the brick inside the cave prevented me from taking the clear shot of the tigers.
There were many another mammals, birds and reptiles I saw on the zoo. Probably I would love writing about them in another post as this post is getting longer. Thanks for stopping by and reading my post馃檪