London Zoo

LONDON ZOO

November 12, 2012

It was on 22^nd September, 2012. After having a heavy breakfast at 8 a.m., we got ready and headed towards the train station. Reached Hounslow at 11:30 a.m., got our one-day travel card worth 8.50 pounds and proceeded for London Waterloo.

While on the train, we changed the plan and got off at Vauxhall. Took a bus to Camden town and popped into M&S to grab some snacks on getting off. After walking for about 20 minutes, we reached London zoo (ZSL).

Right behind the main door stood a photographer who clicked every visitor’s picture on the way to queue.  It could be later collected after our zoo observation had finished. We three clicked ourselves together thinking it was just a formality.

As expected, the queue was quite long on a warm sunny Saturday (6/7 rows of around 10 people/row). However, we reached the front after around 5-10 minutes. Traveling through Southwest trains made us pay 46 pounds (buy 1 get 1 free) in discount.

Excited as we were, gorilla was the first thing to look at. Reptiles were the next. There was information that Harry Potter film scene while Harry talked to the snakes was shot in that place. There were scary vipers, pythons, boa etc.

We walked around and took snacks. I found the London zoo quite similar to the zoo in Nepal in terms of the way animals were kept. It is just that the former has covered a big area of space and is clean and well managed.

Moving towards the penguin beach area, we found more crowd and children there. Perhaps because of the blessing warm sunlight on the very day. We clicked pictures of the man-made blue sea. Some penguins stood on land; some were swimming and some were being fed by the zoo staffs. The distance between the glass bars and visitors was close enough to make the birds and humans feel each other and feel nature. It looked lovely. We were reminded of Happy Feet and The March of Penguins movies and were chatting about how they leave impact upon us. We relaxed and watched penguins swim, from the wide staircase beside the pool. Felt blessed.

It was time to watch other animals. Lioness and her babies were sleeping and resting on the rock. On the way, we passed through the tiger area. There also was an insect’s area which was a bit suffocating place and could not watch much. However, the exhibition of big red ants eating leaves and breaking them into tiny pieces was worth watching.

Walking our way, we reached to kids’ area made by kids. There were meerkats on this section. They looked awesome, especially when one of them stood on the top of the rock (believed to guard their community from danger). Monkeys’ area had notices to remain extra cautious as there were no cages and seemed a natural habitat. They were walking on the way and swinging on the trees. Some were even climbing on us. But they were small.

We came across an area which looked like hills. There were ostrich-like birds and other small animals. Some were seen at the top of the hill. Right where we were standing was a closed restaurant mentioning it was used for ceremonies.

Then we moved towards giraffe section. They looked awesome. We never had a close-up view of them. There were three of them. One was being fed the tree branches. We were excited to see it eat. In fact, the crowd was excited too. Everyone wanted to click themselves with it. We found its eyes lovely (looked like big black kajal eyes). Going past the few reindeers, we then walked through the rainforest. 

African rainforest felt dark, damp, high in humidity and dense. Monkeys and other animals along with big trees were seen. We appreciated the creation of effect (felt a moment of being in African forests). Interestingly, there was an animal which hung itself on the iron rod of the walls and crawled around. However, it became scary when it came below us. I was certain of its attack but, to my relief, it seemed cool and continued its way. We moved out.

Next thing was to walk through the woodland. It was meant to resemble African forest once more. The way was covered with tiny wood pieces. On the way was meerkat again and seal-like animals. The latter grabbed attention of many people because they were in a group and made unique sounds. Heaping over each other, they kept falling down which looked so innocent. It was as if they were having a group photo and all wanted being clicked. We clicked them.

The last section to observe was aquarium. We browsed through the place as we were running out of time. We hurriedly finished our lunch and exited the observation. Since we began our journey around the midday, we could not watch birds’ area. On the way to the exit door, we could see the crowd looking at their pictures taken earlier. We searched ours too. Found it came in a pack. How tempting!!! We paid 20 pounds for our pictures with background of varieties of animals. Had a happy day.