One of the things I noticed about Delhi on my first walk around Connaught Place was the street dogs. They are everywhere in India. I think every city or town street we have walked down has had its own dogs. The poor mutts on Connaught place huddle against paan-stained walls and seem to spend most of their time sleeping or scavenging. In many places are piles of rubbish and dogs and cows sift throught the debris. I saw one woman in Delhi buy a plate of food from a street vendor and put it down for a dog. I've also seen a few signs around advertising charities for street dogs.
It's very easy to feel sad about the dogs, especially when there are puppies like the dear little things we saw curled up next to their mother in Varanasi, but another thnig that struck me about Connaught Place on that first day was that a lot of people aren't much better off. In some cases people are sleeping in one corner and dogs in another. This closeness seems to be the essence of the relationships between people and animals here. In New Zealand the areas for humans and the areas for non-domestic animals are clearly delineated. In India the animal kingdom stops at the front door.
It wouldn't be a post on animals in India without a mention of cows. Outside of Delhi they rule the streets. Cows and bulls actually. A friend we met in Varanasi said that she and a companion had once been charged by a belligerant bovine and raised a stick to threaten it. Immediately they were surrounded by furious Indians. One does not undermine the sanctity of the cow.
But being sacred does not give the cows a velvet-lined cow-pen or the finest fresh grasses. Like the dogs they scavenge in rubbish heaps and eat leftover food and often paper off the streets. We have sometimes seen locals out feeding the cows with fresh greens and in many places there are troughs in the streets for water and food. In Varanasi, Pushkar, Rishikesh the cows look at least well fed.
But they also have sharp horns and an imposing bulk. In the narrow streets of Varanasi passing a cow can be a dangerous exercise if the beast is in a malicious mood. L and I were making our way along a particularly narrrow Varanasi lane when we saw a large horned cow taking up at least two thirds of the alley. Until now I'd considered the cows of India to be quite harmless. Most of the time they seem very benign and relaxed. But this creature took exception to me for some strange cow reason and deliberately rammed its long and pointed horns into my backside. Bang. Of course I made a noise a little like, 'Arrrrggghhhh' and quickly hurried away from the cow's pointy end. This left L in a dilemma because of course she did not want to pass the cow.
A young girl saw our problem and called to an older man, 'Uncleji!' and before we knew it he had made a sort of human wall between himself and the cow. I now have an incredible bruise on my hip but I'm otherwise unscathed. Apparently people are sometimes injured quite badly by bulls here.
This incident gave me an (I think) perfectly understandable fear of cows and later when I was out alone and looking for a particular temple I found another narrow lane with another large, horned, irate looking beast in the middle. Like a typical coward (excuse the pun) I froze and wondered how best to get past.
At this precise moment a teenage girl emerged from a doorway, saw my predicament and began giggling at the idiotic tourist. She also called her brother out of the house and yet again I had a human wall between me and the cow. And so I continued on my merry way. Until I realised that the street was a dead end and I had to go back ... past the same bloody cow.
The cows truly do go everywhere and you even see them at the burning ghats and bathing in the Ganga.
In india you will also experience monkeys on the power lines, lizards in the shower, cobras dancing in a basket and little squirrels that scuttle up trees and scale the sides of palaces.
Inside homes domestic animals are adored and petted and we met Chilli the dog at our hostel in Jodhpur who was a sweet, tubby, pampered little daschund. In Varanasi there was also a friendly green parrot in the hostel and the manager introduced us to his 'wife', a female who apparently bites. The dogs in the hill villages aroud Rishikesh were huge, strong creatures and very well taken care of.
In Jaisalmer we were warned by the hotel owner not to be out too late because of the street dogs but they seemed like such sleepy creatures when we saw them in the day that this seemed a bit dramatic (and Indians warn you about just about everything in India, which is probably fair enough, but if you listened you'd never go anywhere without a driver and a body guard). We did notice more activity from dogs at night in Jaisalmer, but I realised how dangerous they could be in Varanasi.
It was a night to remember. L and I and some friends from the hostel walked along the ghats to a pasta restaurant for dinner (there are places trying to do Italian food everywhere in tourist areas). The Series of Unfortunate Events began when we arrived there and realised that the bearded gent who looked like some sort of Sadhu was our pasta chef and that he was screamingly, unequivocally, drunk. Dressed all in white, his long beard flowing over his chest, he loosely waved his arms in the air and cried, 'We make party!' then he plonked himself down at the table with us, smiling and swaying, and refused to budge, despite the pleading entreaties the waiter.
When your pasta chef is drunk, the logical outcome is usually that your pasta is late and this proved to be the case, although our wait was far from boring since we had a fight between the owner, the waiter and the plastered chef to witness. I think the owner was far from pleased with the state of his cook and blamed the waiter, who he cuffed around the ears. In New Zealand assult charges would be laid, in India they were all good friends again five minutes after the fight.
By the time the tardy pasta had been eaten it was after ten, maybe nearer eleven, so the eight of us got into two tuk tuks and headed home.I was in tuk tuk two. Tuk tuk one, with L in it, got home without incident. Tuk tuk 2 was surely the most crook tuk tuk in Varanasi.
After a couple of hundred metres the engine died. The driver got out, did something with the engine under his seat and off we went. Then it died again. This time the driver called a friend and with R, an Argentinian who drew the short straw and got the front seat, pushed the vehicle back to life. When this happened a third time the driver enlisted another tuk tuk, and we drove along in that with the new driver pushing the ailing tuk tuk along with his foot while steering his own vehicle. We got to a service station, got more petrol, kept going for a little while in the seriously ill little car and then, sure enough . . . Phut! We stopped again. R approached another tuk tuk when the driver started pushing the one we were in along with his foot.
When he saw we were going he said, 'No problem' (while still driving his foot propelled tuk tuk). We got out. Yes, problem.
It was funny, but you also have to wonder how desperate the guy was for the fare.
And you are probably wondering what all of this has to do with animals. Well, when we were dropped off by the new, fully-functioning tuk tuk, we still had to make our way through Varanasi's famous lanes. There were four of us and we didn't notice that the dogs barking around us seemd to be following. When this became obvious we were nearly back at the hostel, so we kept going, but suddenly we were surrounded. Another group of dogs had come up on the other side. There were four of us in the middle and maybe fifteen or twenty dogs in all. They had us cornered. It was an efficient piece of hunting and damn scary.
Luckily there was still an open lane we could go down, but of course there was a great bloody cow in front of it. At this point we all became very glad of R, who it turns out is a sort of Argentinian Dr Dolittle. In an instant he had us sheltered in a doorway and was speaking coaxing words to the cow, which, several terrifying moments later, moved aside.
The dog pack didn't follow us and we soon tumbled into the safety of the hostel.
I don't know if I could ever get used to having animal world so close all the time.
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