A Monkey Tried to Eat Me Once

While I was living in Taiwan I finally did something I’ve wanted to do since I first read books by Francis Hodgson Burnett…I went to India. I spent three weeks traveling around northern India and I’m still not sure if I enjoyed it or not. I went to markets in Delhi, saw the Taj Mahal and got stuck for two days in Agra (which is a horrible city), spent several days in the holy city of Pushkar and another couple days studying massage in Daramsala. There were some good things: I discovered coconut coffee frappes (dude you haven’t lived!), butter chicken, and did some major shopping. There were also less pleasant things: being groped, 50C weather, long pants and sleeves, hiding from my massage instructor who asked me to marry him…and I got attacked by a monkey.

Pushkar was one of my favorite places I visited. Even though it was low season I actually met a fairly large amount of foreigners there; an interesting mix of Europeans bumming around and Israelis who were all just released from the army. One of the people I met was the petit little blond thing who chirpily informed me that she was a fighter pilot. That was weird.

Pushkar was a great place to just be and absorb. It gets mad busy during the season and if you want to go to the big annual camel trading festival you have to book your camping spot like a year in advance.  The Pushkar Lake is sacred and there was plenty to see along the ghats. There was a restaurant I frequented several times that looked over the lake. I liked to go in the evening for a lassi and watch the GIANT BATS fly over the lake. There are also several temples including a Brahma temple to Lord Brahma, one of the holy trinity of Hinduism. There was also some pretty awesome shopping.

After a couple days I gave up wearing shoes all together because every time I entered a temple or shop I had to take them off. Saved so much time just not wearing any. However before that happened I was out exploring one day, just wandering around with my camera and a bottle of frozen water (50C desert, thank you) and I came to a bridge that crossed part of the lake. At first I was busy looking around admiring the pinkish orange stone that made up so much of everything but then was literally hot footing it barefoot across the holy bridge because it was baked by scorching sun. 

Once I crossed the bridge to path on the other side I took a moment to put my shoes back on. I poked around a little but didn’t see much worth going on for. As I turned around to go back though I noticed a large monkey sitting in a niche in the stone cliff face only about two feet away from me.

Ah ha! How opportune! I was two feet away from a monkey and by golly I was going to get a great picture!

You know this is going to go badly for me.

I picked up my camera and tried to creep a little closer because I was greedy. I don’t know if it was just me being there, the creeping, the camera, what…but the monkey was not happy. He leaned forward on a rather massive fist and glared at me then slowly opened his mouth really wide to show me his freaking enormous fang like teeth. Then he screamed at me. 

I’m not entirely stupid so I fled instantly. 

I flew across the bridge having totally forgot to remove shoes but apologizing to the Hindu gods during my brief flight. Convinced he was pursuing me I tried to dash up the narrow set of stairs which lead up from the bridge only to have my path blocked by a cow. I am not Hindu; I am Catholic and find cows to be one of the tastier animals. However I was hesitant to offend the local gods twice in a row by both neglecting to take off my shoes on the bridge and then by shoving aside the cow. Also I was afraid it would step on my relatively unprotected, sandal-shop foot and break it. So I kind of stood there for a few minutes feeling stupid and making little shooing motions at the cow.

The one bit of good news was that the monkey was sufficiently happy with scaring the daylights out of me and had indeed not made a pursuit. And it was a scorching hot day so the only ones around to witness both my lack of cultural sensitivity and general idiocy were the monkey and the cow.