Two weeks before, I visited the Amirthi Zoological Park in the vicinity of Amirthi forest
on the foot of Jawadhu Hills, near Vellore.
Though the zoological park comes under
Tiruvannamalai district, the Vellore city is closer by 25 kms.
I was planning to visit the park for last few
years, and when I made a visit to
Balamathi Hills, adjacent to Vellore city in
Feb 2018, I couldn’t make up to the park due to lack of time and I too did not
want the visit to be a hurried one.
I learned the
zoological park is accessible by wheelchairs and visiting a park in the forest
environment could never miss out of my pocket, because I’m someone always enjoy
visiting forest and stay close to nature. We started the trip from home (Chennai)
at 8am and get there by 12.30 pm, meanwhile stopping the car for breakfast and buying
lunch (biryani) at Arcot, and the route from there was scenic and beautiful as
it took us through mountains and countryside scenes.
'The Arcot –
Kannamangalam is the best and shortest route to reach Amirthi for people coming
from Chennai; and Arcot is the right place to buy food stuffs because there's
nothing available at Amirthi, even though there’s a canteen run by the forest
department, outside the zoological park, we could not expect anything surely.
They don’t allow carrying foods inside the park, so we had our lunch at the
parking lot and there are slabs to sit around the trees to have lunch but
there’s lot of monkeys and stray dogs to cause fear.
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| Indian pond turtles |
Amirthi is a
small zoological park, developed on 25 hectares of forest land, which covers
25 km of forest, made as a wildlife sanctuary and tourist spot the other half.
The park opened in 1967 has minimum number of animals and birds and during my
visit I found many empty cages to make me disappoint. The zoological park seemed to be renovated
lately or the works haven't finished yet, as many cages left with a note of
under repair; the park is well paved to reach every corner of the park without
difficult and it helps to take closer looks at animals and birds in cage.
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| Python relaxing at its room |
I saw Indian
pond turtles inside a glass tank and Golden fox in a den like setting, roaming
alone sadly. There’s a section for
snakes with a series of glass rooms but only a python and Russell’s viper is
available to see, while other rooms are empty. I saw a sign board at the park,
warning people on snakes since the park is located in the vicinity of forest
snakes are supposed to wander freely on the campus. Mongooses are enclosed in a room next to
snakes and porcupines in another small cage, peacocks, pelicans and herons are
put in subsequence cages.
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| Golden Fox (see on the right) in its cage |
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| Pelicans and herons |
There are many
colourful images of animals, birds and reptiles painted on the walls inside and
outside of the park captured our attention. The park, established in a forest
land makes feel its presence though the number of trees that exist from the
forest environment had made a natural canopy throughout the park to make feel
always cool and shady. Amirthi zoological park could be a best picnic place for
family and friends to spend a day on natural environment and shadows, apart
watching animals.
Amirthi
is a very small zoo where you could not expect more; even the children’s park
in Chennai has more animals to attract visitors. Apart the park, there’s a
seasonal waterfalls about a km from here which had to be reached by trekking.
The best time to visit the park is from September to February to make use of
more greenery and to enjoy the waterfalls and river run beside the park, but
even on midsummer you won’t be feel the weather once entered the forest environment.
I
really enjoyed the place despite being a Sunday; there weren’t much people around
the park and only at the time of leaving found a bus full of school kids having
lunch at the parking lot. Staffs at the park were kind to inquire about my convenient
there, and was I able to go everywhere? The only thing that bothers me was to
see fewer animals than expected. Though I don’t like seeing birds or animals in
enclosed cages while they have wing to fly and legs to run… I’m at least happy to
see them because even if we go to forest seeing them is doubt.
I took many photos and I can't post all at a time here... so my future posts will carry those.
