Excursions are a useful enhancement to the education experience. Although there are many important historical sites in the Bodhgaya area, Elsa Primary School students were most keen to visit Patna Zoo & Planetarium.
Patna is the capital city of Bihar, 110 km from Bodhgaya. Due to heavy traffic and poor roads, the journey took 4 hours. Most of the Elsa students had never been further than 15 km from their villages and were unaccustomed to vehicular travel. Thus, there were many bouts of motion sickness along the way. Despite this, all had a great day! The big cats on display at the zoo were especially popular.