Being still a small town with a population of about half-a-million, though well laid out, Lusaka still retain the old world charm of spread out markets. Huge multi-storey malls haven't yet made their presence felt here. Manda Hill seemed the more frequented one (it has a superstore, and you can roam around or have coffee on tabes on the pavement), and Arcades is the other one. 
The central masterpiece in the museum is quite striking - a raised hand ending in a foot!
The road from Lusaka to Mazabuka was quite picturesque - a winding road hemmed in by low hills.
While I stand by my observation that food habits of people in West Africa are closer to India, with the abundance of vegetables, I was pleasantly surprised by one food in Zambia. This was called the 'Tremezzini' at Holiday Inn, and was more like a stuffed 'parantha' (stuffed with fish/chicken/veg - cheese & tomato in the picture) of India, though the outer covering was quite brittle.
The Holiday Inn at Lusaka had a USP - live baby crocodiles inside the hotel. Of course, the crocs were not walking in the lobby or anything. More like they were kept in a small pond around which the breakfast tables were set - provided quite an interesting backdrop. I could see three at a time, and we were told that there are at least five. Lazy creatures - they came out mostly when it was sunny. Otherwise they were content to hide beneath the rocks in the water.
This was quite a fiasco for me, though fortunately my other fellow travellers were none the wiser! What happened was that (trigger happy) I saw an enclose with a small board which said "My Story". It described in good detail the story of an animal who had become orphan as both its parents were killed by poachers (that should have raised my antenna, but sadly it didn't). Naturally, I assumed that the royal goat standing just inside the enclosure was Phoenix, and clicked away happily. It was only when I went a few steps forward that I realised Phoenix was actually a 5-year old elephant!!
time to time. It looked menacing, so we were lucky that there was a moat (though dry) between the fence and where the fellow was sitting.
Another fantastic sight at the Muda Wanga zoo in Lusaka was a full-size Royal Bengal tiger feeding. What they did was put a chunk of meat on top of a small platform which had some kind of a gangplank leading up to it. The tiger reacher the platform, picked up the meat & then jumped down (to collective applause from the onlookers!). The performance completed, it then slunk off towards a grove to enjoy its meal in peace.
My trip to Zambia came off well. The high point was when we wen to the Munda Wanga zoo and botanical garden in Lusaka. Fortunately, when we reached there it was the feeding time for the big animals. So we could catch a good sight of a pride of lions - a mother and her five children including the dominant male (pictured here), another (castrated!) male and five females.
