Some came with friends, others with family. Some came from outside the capital despite the intense heat. Walking around, they looked at different species of animals and birds. This is how thousands of visitors to the zoo in Mirpur in the capital spent their weekly holiday.
On the afternoon of Friday, 11 April, most visitors at the zoo were children, with a notable number of teenagers too. The Eid holidays ended last week. The zoo is not as packed as during Eid or festival holidays, but on Fridays the number of visitors keeps rising after midday.
Sales by hundreds of hawkers in front of the zoo gate rise in step. Some were selling lemon juice, others nuts, balloons, toys and pickles.
Crowds at the cages
Along with the hawkers, CNG autorickshaws and battery-run autorickshaws jam the area in front of the gate. Children and parents crowded in front of the cages of monkeys, tigers, lions, deer and giraffes. Different species of animals, birds and snakes are kept in the zoo's cages, and visitors were going round them one by one.
Kazi Mamun had come from Sreepur in Gazipur with his wife and a daughter. Mamun works at a factory in Gazipur. He said colleagues from his office had hired microbuses to come to the zoo because it was a holiday.
"I was in my village for the Eid holidays. When we came back to work, we all planned to go somewhere together. Today six of us came with our families in two microbuses. The children have seen tigers and bears. We are eating together. The time is passing happily," he said.
Motaleb Amin came with five friends. Buying tickets, the young man said: "We came mainly for an outing with friends. You can't get everyone together at once. Today we could, so we came on the spur of the moment."
Inside the zoo
The zoo covers more than 123 acres. Past the main gate is the monkey cage, and ahead is the bird cage, which holds several hundred birds of different species, including herons, kalim (purple swamphen), greater flamingos and pelicans. Turning left from there leads to the tiger and lion cages.
Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.
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