London Zoo Lodges - Sleeping with the Lions: A Night Inside London Zoo's Gujarati Lodges

You can hear them before you can see them. Somewhere past the darkened tree line, beyond the torchlit pathways and the hush of a zoo without crowds, a lion roars. Then another. The sound is visceral and close enough to make your chest tighten - and when you realize the source is a few dozen meters from the bed you're about to sleep in, somewhere deep in your mammal brain, something very old wakes up.

This, broadly, is the pitch of London Zoo's overnight lodge experience: not just a novelty sleepover, but a reminder that you are, in fact, an animal too.

Location

London Zoo sits in the northern corner of Regent's Park in central London, roughly a 10-minute walk from Baker Street tube station. The park is one of the city's great public spaces - wide lawns, boating lakes, formal gardens - and the zoo occupies around 15 hectares (36 acres) of it. To stay there overnight is, in the most literal sense, to spend the night in the heart of one of the world's most expensive cities without paying for a hotel room on a noisy street.

The nine lodges are tucked inside Land of the Lions, the zoo's centrepiece habitat, which opened in 2016 when Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh cut the ribbon. You enter through a stone archway into what feels genuinely like a different country: a recreation of Sasan Gir, a small town in the Indian state of Gujarat.

Rickshaws, spice sacks, a life-size truck, rangers' huts - much of it shipped directly from India - line the paths. A mock train station dominates one end of the exhibit, and somewhere in the middle, a 360-degree "temple clearing" puts you within meters of the lions themselves. For a city zoo, the theming is extraordinary - some visitors have compared it favorably to Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida.

The World That Inspired It

The designers of Land of the Lions didn't just build an enclosure - they built a town. Before you reach the lions, you pass through a reconstruction of Sasan Gir, the settlement in Gujarat where people and Asiatic lions have learned to share the same streets and farmland.

Rickshaws lean against walls. Sacks of spices sit in doorways. A rangers' hut stands beside the path. A life-size truck - along with much of the set dressing - was sourced and shipped directly from India. The mock train station at one end of the exhibit features tracks where, if the timing is right, a lion can be spotted sprawled across them in the sun.

The point the exhibit makes, quietly but persistently, is that this is not the Africa-savanna version of lions most people carry in their heads. Asiatic lions are forest animals. They live close to humans. The 2,500 square meter (27,000 square foot) habitat reflects that: 46 species of plant, 47 trees, and a landscape designed to feel like a working Indian forest, not a theatrical wilderness.

At the center of it all is the temple clearing - a 360-degree viewing space where the lion enclosure wraps around you on multiple sides and the cats roam within a few meters of where you're standing. It is, by any measure, an unusually immersive piece of zoo design.

ZSL works alongside the Gujarat Forest Department and the Wildlife Institute of India on conservation efforts for the species - training local veterinary teams, improving breeding facilities, and public education. London Zoo's Asiatic lions are part of an international breeding program.

In spring 2024, three cubs were born at the zoo. By October 2025, the female cub Shanti had moved to Chester Zoo as part of the same program. Her brothers Mali and Syanii remain in London with their mother, Arya. Only around 600 to 700 Asiatic lions are estimated to survive in the wild - all of them in a single forest in Gujarat roughly the size of Greater London.

The Lodges

There are nine lodges arranged in a horseshoe around a central courtyard inside Land of the Lions. Five have double beds (Langur, Flamingo, Oriole, Parakeet, and Peacock lodges) and four are twin-bedded (Leopard, Chital, Sunbird, and Kingfisher lodges). Leopard Lodge is the fully accessible option, with a walk-in shower and a more spacious bathroom.

The design takes its cues from guesthouses in the Gir Forest region: warm wood tones, painted murals of the animals that share the lions' habitat - sunbirds, kingfishers, langur monkeys, leopards - and the kind of rich, patterned textiles you'd find in Gujarat. The overall effect is closer to a boutique eco-lodge than anything you'd associate with a zoo. There's a private veranda with seating on each unit, and the arrangement of the lodges means that on a still night, the sound of the lions drifts straight through.

In 2026, ZSL is marking its bicentenary - 200 years since the Zoological Society of London was founded - and each lodge has been given theming tied to a specific moment in the zoo's history. The organization is keen to remind visitors that it has been shaping zoological science since 1826.

One piece of recent history surrounds the lodges. The area they occupy was originally the zoo's tiger enclosure. The Sumatran tigers were relocated to their purpose-built Tiger Territory habitat in 2013, but the architecture of the original enclosure is still visible: shaped stone pillars around the perimeter, and a pathway that follows the line of a stream that once led to a pond for the tigers to swim in. The large tree at the center of the lodge courtyard carries scratch marks from the tigers that lived there.

The Rooms

Each lodge has a proper en-suite bathroom with shower, a veranda with table and chairs, a kettle, and towels folded - at least on family nights - into animal shapes.

What the lodges don't have is much floor space. These are intimate, cozy rooms - well-suited to two people, manageable with a pull-out sofa for a third. A fourth guest (a second child on family nights) sleeps on a mobile guest bed. The accessible Leopard Lodge can accommodate up to two adults and one child, or three adults, with additional guests on a mobile bed rather than a sofa.

Rooms do not have a minibar or television. Once the zoo closes for the night, you are, charmingly, locked inside Land of the Lions until morning. A staff member stays on-site in one of the lodges for emergencies. This is not a stay for people who need an exit strategy.

What Actually Happens With the Animals

The lodges experience is structured around three exclusive tours: a sunset walk as the zoo closes to day visitors, a late-night torchlit tour after dinner, and an early-morning excursion before the public arrives.

The evening tours have included visits to porcupine enclosures where you prepare enrichment boxes packed with hidden nuts and watch the animals investigate them, the nocturnal house explored with red-light torches designed not to disturb the animals, the bug house, the flamingo pond, and a tour of the kitchen where animal meals are prepared.

The morning tour catches animals during their breakfast, which means keeper talks at the gorilla and gibbon enclosures, camels, tortoises, and penguins. But the most interesting encounter is with the Sumatran tigers. The night before, children prepare enrichment packages: cardboard boxes with spices rubbed inside. In the morning, before the zoo opens, they watch the tigers receive and interact with the boxes they made.

You also get two full days of zoo access as part of the package - the day of arrival, the day of departure - and free admission to ZSL's Whipsnade Zoo in Bedfordshire on the day you check out. Given that Whipsnade is one of the largest wildlife parks in the UK, covering around 243 hectares (600 acres), that is a not-insignificant addition.

The lion pride - Arya and her two male cubs, Mali and Syanii - are most vocal in the evenings. If you've booked a lodge and fallen asleep to the sound of them, you will almost certainly be woken by them again at dawn.