Ju

Friday was a holiday for Vivian on account of Sankranti - the kite-flying festival. So we packed up and went to the zoo ("Ju" in Hyderabadi). The Nehru Zoological Park is almost fifty years old and in it's heyday was one of the finest zoos in India. It was designed without traditional cages for most of it's inhabitants (leopards, jaguars, and cheetas are the exceptions), instead relying on large natural looking enclosures surrounded by moats. 

We opted not to drive (there's a main road the winds around the zoo) or take the "visitor vans". It a cool morning before the crowds and the heat of the day. Evan and Vivian enjoyed the monkeys and chimpanzees, the elephants (most of whom were eating breakfast), a roaring white Bengal tiger (with a spot of diarrhea), two rambunctious juvenile tigers, hippos, a rhino, and an variety of birds. We went to the safari park and saw two lionesses very close up, and two Himalayan black bears that rambled past us within arms reach.

Evan called all the smaller animals "dogs" and all the larger animals "cows". It's a much simpler classification than ours and he has stuck to it steadfastly for many months now. He roared with the tiger. And flirted with a girl sitting next to him on the safari, managing to hold her hand by the end of the trip.

Vivian was like a jaded teenager. Some sparks of interest here and there but mostly wanting ice cream and complaining about how tired she was. Some college-age girls hijacked her briefly for photographs and cheek-pinching. She enjoyed the overall experience enough to extract a promise from Jo and me that we'd come back again to the Ju soon.

By the end of our trip the place was overrun with picnicking families and thousands of school boys and girls in uniforms. They looked at the animals but they gawked at Jo. I'd say she generated at least as much excitement as the other white animal - the tiger. Next time I'm going to ask the zoo to waive her entry fee. All 20 cents of it, dammit.