Monkeyworking what is left of hotel decorative plantings.
Click here for my XXX Monkey Macaque slide show.
We were 11 gringos in India over the Millenium, for a short but memorable three week pilgrimage of Buddhist holy sites, under the auspices and loving care of Ven. Losang Samten. A few were seasoned world backpackers, the rest were bedazzled, praying for our lives in the breakneck taxis, running in terror from persistent little girls chasing us with stolen, wilting lotus stalks, jumping to the heavens as scuttling, lame beggars clutched our ankles. “Namaste, Namaste, Madam, Madam,” became not a benediction at the end of Yoga class, but the stimulus to clammy, wallet-clutching panic.
He waited for me every morning by Bodhgaya's Mahabodhi Temple. He could not walk, but he could laugh, and his delight was to clutch my ankles and watch me jump.
It is 1204 kms from Gaya, Bihar to Dharamsala, H.P. and as long as that is, the journey seems longer. In fact the train did not stop at Dharamsala, but at a station to the south which name I have forgotten. The trip was complicated by several factors. For one, Gaya is in Bihar, one of the poorest states in all the Republic of India. Therefore there was perhaps one light bulb in the entire train station and it was dead night when we departed. This meant we were continually stepping on people who were stretched out sleeping, impossible to see, in all the halls and walkways, most of them quite irritable.
Our confusion was compounded when we finally boarded the train to discover our berths had all been sold to other travelers, despite our reservations. We deboarded and Losang, who is fluent in Hindi and English as well as his native Tibetan, eventually roused the station manager, a tall imposing and handsome Sikh. A deal was struck. This involved riding standing up on the overbooked train for a few hours until we got to some ghostly midnight station somewhere, then a desperate run, dragging our baggage, upstairs and along overpasses, to another platform to catch another train where, magically, we had perfect accomodations. We slept at last, well past midnight.
The late December morning dawned, and I opened my eyes to meet those of some stranger who was fixedly staring at me through the opening of my upper berth curtains. He was expressionless, and moved aside like a wraith when I, having no idea what else to do, swung my legs over the side and lowered myself to the floor.
The windows were caked with filth. I could see out only through a tiny bottom corner.
But all discomforts were forgotten when I saw my first monkey. Somehow I wasn’t surprised. I must have seen Indian train station monkeys in a travelogue years ago. And there they were at some stop in the foothills, visible through that blessed few inches of my window that were not opaque, knuckling themselves between the parked railway cars, over the tracks, on and off the station platform, going wherever they cared to go. They were golden, agile, graceful, insouciant, slightly menacing. They were everywhere. My heart almost stopped with joy. Click here for monkey slide show.
This is India, the home of the original hippies and the Golden Mantled Rhesus Macaque. The most right-brained, zany country on earth. Double booked railway seats, random sleepers, staring mute passengers, useless windows and hordes of free-roaming monkeys. I sat by a member of our group now sharing the sliver of useable window, as we rode through miles of countryside: people perched in trees, towns as old as God looking as though they grew out of the yellow earth, people squatting to cook alongside the highways, one time an elephant lumbering through traffic. After fifteen silent minutes she turned to me: “Don’t they have a government?”
We had audience with His Holiness, the XIV Dalai Lama, thanks to Losang. We attended teaching and toured magnificent temples. And between these engagements, I watched monkeys. “Excuse me,” I would say as we walked homeward along the delightful mountain trails: “I’m going to have my Jane Goodall moment.”
Mother grooms a youth alongside a mountain trail. Fencing is visible, but it is a property marker only. The monkeys are in no way confined anywhere.I was perhaps five feet away.
Mcleod Ganj in Upper Dharamsala is the famous hill station near the Dali Lama’s Namgyal Monastery and not far from the headquarters of the Tibetan Government in Exile. The monkeys retreat to the rhododendron forest in the higher elevations to sleep. Then, earlier than anybody else gets up, they descend. They descend to the terraces of the hotels and guest houses, to the shops and streets. Dogs bark at them and innkeepers swing their brooms. The monkeys fight back, jumping and screaming.They swing from the phone wires. They invade the room of the young, female, shrieking Korean tourists. ”Lock your windows” is standard advice. And don’t carry any food.
At last! Animals amaong usliving natural lives! In USA they’d all be massacred by dead-eyed, thin-lipped men with big belt buckles. Here the animals, at least so far, survive. And survive well. They look sleek and healthy. I can’t get enough of it. The Indian government (yes there is one) is less entranced. There are frequent anti-monkey campaigns. New Delhi is a case in point. Click here for 2003 article.
Delhi residents are tired of being ” bitten, robbed and otherwise tormented by monkeys that ransack files, bring down power lines, screech at visitors and bang on office windows.”
In 2002, “the monkeys made their presence felt by hanging from window ledges and screeching at reporters arriving for a news conference with visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Office-raiding, Rumsfeld-threatening Delhi monkey.
“It’s a big problem, especially in the evening,” says Defense Ministry spokesman Amitabha Chakrabarti. Monkeys break into offices at night and paw through the files looking for food, he said. “Those who work late hours have to be careful when it is dark.”
But unlike the heartless solution Dept. of Wildlife officials would deal out to such creatures if they dared invade the USA, the Indians are flummoxed by the simians, and continue to live in moderate disharmony with them. I pray they maintain this standoff:
“A past initiative to scare off the army of Rhesus macaques with ultrahigh frequency loudspeakers didn’t work. A plan to deport them to distant regions has stalled because local governments refused to have them.
“There’s an ape patrol of fierce-looking primates called langurs, led about on leashes by keepers. But whenever a langur looms, the pink-faced, two-foot-tall hooligans simply move elsewhere on government grounds.
“‘Please do not feed the monkeys,’” implores a sign at Raisina Hill, the complex of colonnaded buildings that includes the president’s residence, Parliament, and Cabinet offices.
“To no avail. Hindus believe that monkeys are manifestations of the monkey god, Hanuman, and worshippers come to Raisina Hill every Tuesday handing out bananas.”
I want to go back specifically to revel in monkeys, and next time, I’ll bring bananas.
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