Despite heat, zoo a haven

THE KANPUR zoological garden has turned out to be the best place for students, visitors and even love birds. Despite hot and humid weather, hundreds of visitors throng the zoo either with their families or all alone to enjoy the day.

THE KANPUR zoological garden has turned out to be the best place for students, visitors and even love birds. Despite  hot and humid weather, hundreds of visitors throng the zoo  either with their families or all alone to enjoy the day.

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For Manish Gupta, Sajjan Agarwal and others, the zoo is the ideal place in the city to prepare for competitive or university examinations. They told HT that they came to the zoo during preparation leave to study under the trees amidst natural beauty and silence, without any disturbance. When they felt  bored , they relaxed by taking a round of the enclosures  or going up to the canteen.

For Arunesh, Kamal and their friends, the zoo is a place for ‘pleasure hunt’. Growling of the big animals and chirping of birds in the silence of  the “artificially created forest” provided a unique kind of solace which could not be expressed in words, they said. “ We can not get this peace and joy even after spending money on movies. We come to the zoo  quite often  to relax without spending money in food joints and cinema halls.”

Elderly  visitors come to the zoo to free themselves from the tension of  power rostering and water scarcity. They said that they preferred to stay in the zoo  at noon to enjoy a siesta.

Families visit the zoo just for an outing within the city and to show the place to their summer guests. While the elders gossip or play cards, children  get pleasure from visiting the wild animals inside the enclosures.For love birds, the zoo offers several facilities and they  enjoy each other’s company. However, their peace is sometimes disturbed when some unscrupulous persons try to extort money from them.According to zoo director R Hemant Kumar, the zoo has become the centre of attraction  because of  its natural beauty.