Tour of India - National Zoological Park

Tour Of India

National Zoological Park

The National Zoological Park (Delhi Zoo) is a 176-acre (71 ha) zoo near the Old Fort in Delhi, India. A 16th-century citadel, a sprawling green island and a motley collection of animals and birds, all in the middle of a burgeoning urbane Delhi. The zoo is home to about 1350 animals representing almost 130 species of animals and birds from around the world.

The zoo can be seen on foot or using a battery-operated vehicle which can be rented at the zoo.Visitors are not permitted to bring any food other than drinking water, but there is a canteen in the zoo.

History

The delhi zoo came decades later after the New delhi was built. although the idea to have a zoo at the national capital was mooted in 1951, the park was inaugurated in November 1959.

In 1952 the Indian Board for Wildlife created a committee to look into creating a zoo for Delhi. The government of India was to develop the zoo and then turn it over to Delhi as a working enterprise. In 1953 the committee approved the location of the zoo, and in October 1955 it assigned N. D. Bachkheti of the Indian Forest Service to oversee the creation of the zoo.

Initially Major Aubrey Weinman of the Ceylon Zoological Garden (now the National Zoological Gardens of Sri Lanka) was asked to help draw the plans for the zoo, but because he was not available for the long term, Carl Hagenbeck of the Zoological Garden of Hamburg was hired. In March 1956, Hagenbeck presented a preliminary plan, which included the recommendation to use moated enclosures for the new zoo. The plan was modified as needed to account for local conditions, and approved by the Indian government in December 1956.

By the end of 1959, the Northern part of the zoo was complete, and animals which had been arriving for some time and which had been housed in temporary pens were moved into their permanent homes. The park was opened on 1 November 1959 as the Delhi Zoo. In 1982 it was officially renamed to National Zoological Park, with hopes that it could become a model for other zoos in the country.

 

Conservation breeding

The zoo is part of conservation breeding programs of the Central Zoo Authority for the royal Bengal tiger, Indian rhinoceros, swamp deer, Asiatic lion, brow antlered deer, and red jungle fowl.

The breeding program for the brow antlered deer has been so successful, starting with a pair of these deer in 1962, that individuals from the herd have been distributed to zoos in Ahmedabad, Kanpur, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Junagarh, and Mysore, and have acclimated well to all of these locations.

How to reach 

DTC Bus routes towards the Zoo

No. From To 894-A New Delhi Rly. Station Holy Family Okhla 445 New Delhi Rly. Station Greater Kailash 374 Nand Nagari Nehru Place 402 Old Delhi Rly. Station Okhla 403 Old Delhi Rly. Station Okhla Village 405 ISBT Badarpur Border 419 Old Delhi Rly. Station Ambedkar Nagar 423 Mori Gate Ambedkar Nagar 425 ISBT Kalkaji 429 ISBT Ambedkar Nagar 438 Old Delhi Rly. Station Jaitpur 966 Nangloi Nizamudin Rly. Station

Nearest Metro Station from Zoo → Pragati Maidan, : 2 kms             → CGO Complex, Lodi Road  : 2 kms

Places at the approx, distance of Zoo

→ New Delhi Rly. Station	: 6 Kms.
→ Old Dehi Rly. Station	: 11 Kms
→ I.S.B.T	: 12 Kms
→ Sarai Kaley Khan Bus	: 5 Kms
→ Red Fort	: 10 Kms
→ India Gate	: 2 Kms

Thank you....
Love Aggarwal

Tour of India - Jantar Mantar, Delhi

Tour of India

The Jantar Mantar

is located in the modern city of New Delhi. It consists of 

13 architectural astronomy instruments.

The site is one of five built by Maharaja Jai Singh II of Jaipur, from 1724 onwards, as he was given by Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah the task of revising the calendar and astronomical tables. There is a plaque fixed on one of the structures in the Jantar Mantar observatory in New Delhi that was placed there in 1910 mistakenly dating the construction of the complex to the year 1710. Later research, though, suggests 1724 as the actual year of construction. The primary purpose of the observatory was to compile astronomical tables, and to predict the times and movements of the sun, moon and planets. Some of these purposes nowadays would be classified as astronomy. Completed in 1724, the Delhi Jantar Mantar had decayed considerably by 1867.

Purpose of Individual Structures

There are four instruments within the observatory of Jantar Mantar in New Delhi: the Samrat Yantra, the Ram Yantra, the Jayaprakash, and the Mishra yantras.

• Samrat Yantra: The Samrat Yantra, or Supreme Instrument, is a giant triangle that is basically an equal hour sundial. It is 70 feet high, 114 feet long at the base, and 10 feet thick. It has a 128-foot-long (39 m) hypotenuse that is parallel to the Earth's axis and points toward the North Pole. On either side of the triangle is a quadrant with graduations indicating hours, minutes, and seconds. At the time of the Samrat Yantra's construction, sundials already existed, but the Samrat Yantra turned the basic sundial into a precision tool for measuring declination and other related coordinates of various heavenly bodies.

• Jayaprakash Yantra: The Jayaprakash consists of hollowed out hemispheres with markings on their concave surfaces. Crosswires were stretched between points on their rim. From inside the Ram, an observer could align the position of a star with various markings or a window's edge.

• Misra Yantra: The Misra Yantra was designed as a tool to determine the shortest and longest days of the year. It could also be used to indicate the exact moment of noon in various cities and locations regardless of their distance from Delhi – quite remarkable! The Mishra yantras were able to indicate when it was noon in various cities all over the world and was the only structure in the observatory not invented by Jai Singh II.

Other Observatories

Between 1727 and 1734 Jai Singh II built five similar observatories in west-central India, all known by the name Jantar Mantar. They are located at 

 Jaipur 

 Ujjain

 Mathura

 Varanasi.

 While the purpose of the Jantar Mantars is astronomy and astrology (Jyotish), they are also a major tourist attraction and a significant monument of the history of astronomy.


Thank you....

Love Aggarwal