A DAY IN JAWLAKHEL ZOO

On 26^th of July ’08 (i.e. 11^th of Sharwan 2065 BS) Saturday , went to Jawlakhel to worship Rato Machendranath and also visited the zoo –  for a sort of picnic with gharveti didi (Radhika Maharjan) with her two daughters and her kith and kins along with suman dc and Mahesh airi. This was the first outing for me (i.e. any site seeing or in a public place) after coming to Kathmandu , to persue higher education in Tribhuvan university. We started at, say around 10 am in the morning, in a bus full of families to go to Jwalakhel. After reaching there we first offered prayers and worshipped Rato Machendranath and thereafter went inside the zoo. Saturday being holiday there was a large mob of families and it was very difficult to get inside the zoo but anyhow Abin Maharjan and myself got inside and found many group of families occupying(sitting) empty space inside the zoo, almost every corner of the park were occupied and Suman and myself was asked by Radhika didi to go ahead to look for vacant place but there was hardly any open area. At last we got one and brought everything/belongings to the mentioned place and then after arranging, we all sat down and started eating different delicacies prepared by our tenant and her relatives. The atmosphere/environment over there was so over whelming that everyone were busy in their world enjoying every bit of it. Mahesh, Suman and myself went further inside the zoo to see different types and species of animals and birds. Somewhere even found people dancing and singing their traditional folk dance. Mostly people inside were from newar community. I enjoyed every bit of it inside the zoo. Eventually, at around 5 pm we packed our stuff and came out of the park and just after 10 min walk saw some people especially elderly offering water to the passerby which was very pleasing to see. On our way back our tenant and her kins decided to walk on foot all the way to Kirtipur via shortcut route they knew rather than going in a bus, on which we agreed and decided to accompany them. And we reached our place around 7pm in the evening after nearly 2 hours walk from Lalitpur. This is how the day went about.