Hello hiver, hope you all are doing fine. This blog will cover my story of visit to the Mahendra Chaudhary Zoological Park located in outskirts of Chandigarh in village Chhat of Zirakpur. In this blog I will share my experience and the information about the zoological park so that in future if you want to visit this amazing place you would have an overview and would not face any kind of difficulty.
The Mahendra Chaudhary Zoological Park is basically known as Chhatbir Zoo and is home to a large variety of mammals, reptiles and birds. The most attractive thing is this zoo is its Walk-in aviary, which connects the 500 acers of land which is home to approximal 1200 animals to the people visiting the zoo. The zoo was constructed by the Indian government in 1977 and was inaugurated by the governor of punjab Sh. Mahendra Moan Chaudhary so it came to know as Mahendra Chaudhary Zoological park. Back then a small number of animals were brought to this zoo from Guwahati zoo and today it is the Largest Zoo in the North India.
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The major attraction for visitors in Zoo is wildlife safari, the dinosaur park and bird park. The zoo provides many facilities to the visitors such as ferry vehicles, food court, visitor shelters and allow you to ride your own bicycle. The Zoo time to open is 9:30AM in morning and is open till 4:30PM in evening. The zoo remains closed on Monday for visitors and also on national holidays of country. You need to pay a tariff of Rs.100 (approx 1.20$) for visitors of age above 12 years and below that tariff is Rs.50 (approx 60$). The zoo is free to visit for children's of age less than 3 years and for disabled persons(zoo provide wheel chair for these people). If you want to rent a ferry vehicle inside zoo it costs Rs.500(approx 6$) for 6 seater and Rs.1000(approx 12$) for 12 seater. You can reach zoo by bus or cab from Chandigarh as it is at 20 km from the city center or sector 17 Chandigarh.
Above paragraph contains major information about MC Zoological park.
I planned this visit in October of 2021 as I was free from work from college so me and my friends planned to go for a day out trip, hence we decided to go for this zoological park which I had visited earlier in 2017. The plan for this visit was made so fast that I was not able to charge my camera battery so you might see the only limited pictures mainly of animals. We got ready within half hour after making this plan by 10am in morning and we was at the zoo by 11:30 am. We took out entry pass for the zoological park and started to explore it. The Zoo was changed very much back from my earlier visit and many new arrivals of animals we added to it but I was very curious to visit dinosaur park. We didn't took the ferry vehicle as we want to cover the zoo by walking.
Chhatbir Zoo provides a fascinating and beautiful drive-in Wildlife Safari. If you rent for Safari Vehicle then tickets will be taken on a ride through the Zoo's Lion and Deer Safaris. We can enjoy the thrill of seeing big carnivores and charming families of herbivores roaming freely in an one package. The path of vehicle is in zoo map shown in picture below.
Above picture is copyrighted by Chhatbir zoo and is used in this blog for only informative purpose
We firstly went to the Monkey complex and found three to four types of monkeys and was able to took some amazing pictures of them.
MACAQUE RHESUS
MACAQUE LION TAILED
Now we head towards the The Royal Bengal Tiger and the White Tiger. It is carnivorous animal meaning that it only hunts and eats other animals in order to gain the nutrition that it needs.
ROYAL BENGAL TIGER
WHITE TIGER
It was an amazing feeling to see these dangerous beasts with naked eyes and next we head towards Hippos.
All hippos were in water so we were only able to se their head and back. If you visit in a good sunny days of their eating time then you might be able to see them out of water. The last time I visited here then hippos was out of water. so we continued to our next animal that was Elephant.
THE INDIAN ELEPHANT
We were not able to see them closely but they were as big as giants from far away. There were three elephants as two males and one female and they were covering there skin with soil by spreading it with there trunk. These are the beautiful creatures and now we head towards the Loin Safari. If you rent a ferry vehicle tour ticket will provide access to loin safari and deer safari for free but if you haven't rent an ferry you need to pay Rs.50 per person for lion and deer safari.
It was half an hour journey of lion safari, the vehicle will take you inside a natural forest area where kings of jungle roam freely but in our case the lion sleeping and lioness was awake. It was an amazing experience of my life as I have seen a lion for the first time. The last time I missed this safari due to lack of time but for this time it was my top priority and was totally worth it. Unfortunately I was not able to click as many pictures during the safari. After this safari we head towards the Leopards and Cats complex.
LEOPARD
JUNGLE CAT
The next complex was Dinosaur park and was new to me as it was not earlier when I visited this zoological park. This park is dedicated to presenting accurate and scientific dinosaur facts. The Dinosaurs Park at Chhatbir Zoo has been designed as a very participatory and enjoyable zoo education activity that will give the public with extremely useful scientific understanding in a fun way.
If you want to know more about the Dinosaur Park you can check my friend @jahanvirawat blog of DINOSAUR PARK. You can get all the information you need about dinosaur park in that blog. After the astonishing park we head towards the Bear complex.
HIMILAYAN BLACK BEAR
The bear was enjoying the sunny day and was playing with sugarcane stick. It was 2pm in afternoon so we decided to have some snacks inside the zoo canteen and then go to the Chhatbir Bird Park section of the zoo. Chhatbir Bird Park is India's longest and largest walk-in aviary, as well as the most appealing and sought-after Chhatbir Zoo amenity. You are admitted free of charge to the Walk-in-Aviary if you have zoo admission ticket . With roughly 60 distinct species of birds, the Bird Park includes seven different thematic habitat-based architecture. The some of the beautiful picture of animals I was able to take inside bird park is below.
EMU
PEAFOWL INDIAN
QUAIL
PARAKEET ALEXANDRINE
You can also check my friend @ayushverma Blog of MC ZOO for more amazing picture and experience of Chhatbir bird park. By the time we came out of bird park time was 3:30 pm and zoo is about to close. So we decided to skip the deer safari and go forward to next complex but we managed to find some of deer in small complex of Spotted Deer.
SPOTTED DEER
The Safari van drives you to Deer Safari, which is home to herds of various wild deer species. In a single package, visitors can experience the excitement of viewing majestic, stunning families of herbivores wandering freely. We missed it due to lack of time but it will be surely be my top priority next time I get the opportunity to visit this zoo. Now we head towards our final complex of Crocodile.
GHARIAL
This was our last animal and then we left the zoo after an amazing day. We didn`t managed to visit full zoological park and I have not mentioned many of the animals in this blog so if you want to visit this place you need to give a full day to it so that you can cover everything. I would recommend you come early in morning by 9:30am for entry in zoo and rent a ferry vehicle. It will help you to reduce the time to travel between different complex of animals and with its rent ticket you will not require to pay for Lion and Deer Safari otherwise you need to pay separately for these safaris. The Dinosaur park and Bird park walk-in aviary if free with your entry pass of Zoological Park.
My recommendations in above para if you want to visit this place.
That is all for this BLOG.
All the picture in this blog is taken using Canon 5DSR and edited by me using Adobe Lightroom.
If you want to use any of these you can access me on Instagram by @rajatkhalata.
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HAVE A NICE DAY.