Animal parks are a dime a dozen in India but a new-fangled nocturnal zoo has turned out to be a big draw with visitors making a night of it in the man-made jungle in the marvellous menagerie. Located in Mughal-built Ahmedabad, the country’s first world heritage city in Gujarat, the 9,000-square-metre zoological garden bordering a vast, polygonal lake has two thrilling caves with some 20 gigantic glass enclosures housing scores of wild, nightprowling animals, rodents and birds.
The 2,000-odd men, women and children who throng the zoo every day are struck with wonder as they enter the spacious, dim-lit tunnels with ceilings resembling a night sky full of twinkling stars and a shapechanging moon simulated by a high-tech, first-of-its-kind, self-programmed lighting system not found in other exhibition galleries. And with real cries of the inhabitants in the microphonefitted cages designed as landscaped natural habitats, as also recorded....
