India's Suburban Safari

 

I returned from a morning at the Taj Mahal to find my hotel room ransacked.

The crime scene bore some unusual characteristics. While my credit card, passport and mobile were untouched, the wash bag was desecrated. Toothpaste was smeared on the floor, cigarettes torn apart and the sheets dusted with re-hydration salts. The windowsill was covered in travel-sweet wrappers. One of the bars was missing.

I was not alone. A fellow traveller was approached at a temple and distracted with an aggressive show of teeth. The assailant grabbed her digital camera and scampered up the nearest tree. After a prolonged standoff, the victim went in search of bananas, resigned to offering a ransom. She returned to find the device in pieces on the concrete steps below.

As she scoured the scene for the memory card, an accomplice snatched the fruit.

There’s no warning in the guidebooks about a simian criminal underworld, preying on unsuspecting tourists, effectuating theft and wanton vandalism. Reasoning or negotiation is clearly futile. But could a soft touch towards animals by the locals be the cause of all this monkey business?

A friend Chris, returning from a day on the beach in Kerala, found a cat had snuck into his room and given birth on the bed. When the hotel owner offered to ‘get rid of it’, Chris urged him to be kind. He needn’t have worried.

‘Don’t fear, I’ll put her next door’ assured his host.
‘Why don’t I just take that room?’ asked Chris, pondering the mess on his sheets.
‘Next door has a better fan – keep the little ones cool, no?’ came the response, with a friendly wobble of the head.

In New Delhi, newspapers debate how to reduce cow casualties from traffic accidents. Some support their right to roam freely, while others advocate moving them to suburban sanctuaries. As far as I can see, there is minimal consideration of the affects of all this on the city’s human residents.

In the holy city of Varanasi, disobliging the bovine populace is unthinkable. Here, in the narrow cobbled streets of the old town, it was standard practice to I dive into a silk emporium or cybercafé while a herd of buffalo passed.

Waiting for two cows that were munching on rubbish and blocking my path, I started chatting to a family on a balcony high to my left. ‘The white one’s ours’ explained the daughter. ‘She gives 5 litres of milk a day’.

Living in a third-floor city centre apartment was clearly no barrier to keeping cattle.

Your best bet as an outsider is learning to adopt the equanimity of the locals. You know you’ve fully adjusted when a goat jumps onto your table in an upmarket restaurant and the conversation continues uninterrupted as the waiter ushers it outside. Or when, sunbathing on the beach, a camel licks your face and you calmly wipe it dry and carry on reading.

Think positive. In India you get a free safari with every trip.