"Nature!"

Welcome back. Hopefully, for at least a few of you, the title sprang to life in your mind as the sound of Will Farrell pretending to be Robert Goulet. If not, watch the video clip at the end of the post.

Seriously though, this post is just to show some photos I've taken while out and about in Southern India. And first, this is the guy who is kind enough to wait 9 hours for me at work during the week and take me to all these places on the weekends. Sure he's getting paid for the driving, but I assume I'm also taking him away from some family time, so he gets his props.

Azmath, so happy

Lal Bagh Botanical Garden - October 8, 2012
With Columbus Day (US) off from work, my driver took me to Lal Bagh and showed me around. The name"Lal Bagh (or Lalbagh)" translates to Red Garden. For this time of year, not everything was blooming yet again, so it wasn't as colorful as I'd hoped. You can see some pictures here. There are also a couple of short videos here and here.

Bannerghatta Zoo - October 13, 2012
The zoo itself received mixed reviews. I've added videos of the hippos splashing in the water (they have other dry tanks to move around but prefer to stay in the water), some monkeys chasing each other above the aviary, and a leopard/panther stalking the zoogoers (me). One of the coolest things is that you can get right up near the elephants and you can touch them. Also, I had heard from a few sources that the safari was a good experience. For only about $5 more than the park entry fee, we drove around in a school bus through a few contained areas to see bears, lions, tigers, and other wildlife. Azmath politely insisted I sit near the window to get a better view. He then told me, "They've only recently added the mesh cage around the bus after a little girl was snatched out of one of the windows maybe 3 or 4 years ago." See the photos here.

Tamil Nadu - October 13 (cont'd)
After seeing all there was to see at the zoo, we still had a few hours to kill before a dinner reservation I had made. So Azmath called up some of his other driver-friends, and asked what other "touristy" stuff was in the area. Apparently the public recently became aware of a small waterfall another 30-45 minutes drive to the Southeast. This was actually my first experience truly being in the "country" in India...open roads, large fields, rice paddies, and the occasional small town. The view was spectacular and a welcome change from 30+ straight days of concrete and traffic. When we arrived, I had to walk down about 200 stairs to reach the valley below where the waterfall was visible. I had no idea we crossed into another state (from Karnataka to Tamil Nadu) while searching for the spot. Since my driver's car is for "commercial use," he is technically not supposed to travel outside the state without paperwork and paying the appropriate taxes. On the way home he told me, he had no such papers, and if we had been stopped, we likely would have either had to bribe them to let us back to Karnataka or leave something of value with them to return and get the papers taken care of. Fun stuff.

Big Banyan Tree - October 20, 2012
One other neat-looking place I wanted to visit was Dodda Alada Mara. It's also on the outskirts of Bangalore. Azmath on more than one occasion let me know there's really nothing to see there...it's just a big tree. The wiki page isn't so helpful explaining, but I guess banyan = fig, so it's a giant fig tree. Also, and I'm not 100% sure of this, but the tree doesn't have a central trunk like most tree's we think of. There are hundreds and thousands of smaller, individual stalks/trunks growing up out of the ground spread over a huge area. It's almost like a series of vines. In any case, there are also quite a collection of monkeys living at the tree, and they are feed insane amounts of crap from the visitors. They are not really afraid of people, and a few were grabbing my hands and pockets looking for more snacks which was even a little unnerving. In any case, I'm happy I was persistent with Azmath because it was definitely like nothing I've seen or experienced before. Here are some pics and a video of me feeding one of the monkeys.

As for the Will Farrell reference above. Well here's that video as well. I've clipped the begging because it's a bit of a long clip, most of it doesn't apply, and there's some language early on that might offend some.

Still more to come next time!

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Animals are People Too

Welcome back. I've missed you, have you missed me?

Since we last chatted, there has been another strike/protest by the people of Karnataka (Bangalore's state). There is a river that runs South from Karnataka to another state called Tamil Nadu, and there is a dam between Bangalore and Mysore (nearby city) that is retaining quite a lot of the river water. The government of Karnataka decided to release water from the dam, and the people of Bangalore, Mysore and Karnataka in general were not pleased.

These strikes that keep happening are apparently not normal for India, says my driver. There have been 3 since I've arrived approximately 1 month ago. Restaurants close. Gas stations close. Rickshaws and buses mostly shut down. This week's "bandh" was scheduled for Saturday, but Friday the tensions were so high that it was basically considered a half-bandh. Protesters have been active near the dam for a few days, but as agitation increased, they started gathering in Bangalore city limits Friday and forced road closures and traffic diversions. Saturday went on as planned, so again, I stayed in my hotel all day. I hit the gym for the first time since I arrived, I caught up on some American TV online, and I ordered room service.

But that's all boring and you've heard it all before. I want to talk about dogs and cows.

The city of Bangalore basically shuts down around 10:30 PM. Sure there are people out later and cars on the road all night, but most businesses - including bars - are closed by 10:30 or soon after. At any given time of day, there are hundreds of stray animals roaming the streets of Bangalore. But at night, the dogs take over the town.

Dogs in Bangalore are basically Bros in Wrigleyville.

There is a stray dog for every 37 people in Bangalore. These dogs have a distinct personality. Not that American dogs don't have personality, but with dogs in the US, you never know what kind of temperament you're going to get. Here, they all act the same. Sometimes they run around in packs, and it's a little impressive to watch them all turn a corner together as if they're headed to the next bar. They wait for cars to pass before running out into the road, but sometimes if the car gets too close or is the right/wrong color they will bark and chase it. I can picture bros leaving Sluggers to walk to Barleycorn while cat-calling and whistling every girl that passes, or jaw-jacking the guy wearing a baseball cap from any team other than the Cubs. You can always tell which dog is the leader of the group, whether it be 2 or 6 of them running around. The alpha leads the way, focused. He knows where he's going, and he knows his pals will follow. The annoying guy who can't seem navigate the area on his own is running along beside the alpha, occasionally nipping at him for attention. And sometimes the dogs have just had a rough day and need to lay down and take a nap (pass out). I watched a dog last week stagger around the street, walk over to the sidewalk, puke, and then continue on his way. I feel so at home sometimes on my 3AM ride back to the hotel.

Why are there so many stray dogs? I don't know exactly. Why are there so many bros in Wrigleyville? My driver said that the old policy used to be that the city would capture the dogs and put them down. Before you scream animal cruelty, remember that these dogs are wild, and people here live in small houses to begin with. They dogs are mangy and you can't just walk up and pet them. Not that you would want to. There is no reason for anyone to adopt them, so they would end up getting put down anyway. A few people have dogs as pets, and occasionally I'll see someone sitting or walking their dog, but 99% of the dogs you see outside are strays wandering about. The new policy by the city is supposedly that they will capture, sterilize, and release the dogs. Hopefully the population will eventually die out naturally. But from what I can tell, they aren't doing a very good job as most of the strays still appear to have all their parts.

Cows have the right of way, most of the time.

My driver takes me basically the same route to work every day. I'm getting comfortable seeing cows and dogs and goats sifting through trash on the side of the road in certain neighborhoods. (Yes, there is a LOT of trash on the side of the roads.) Occasionally, a full sized cow will just be chilling in the middle of the road. The cars here are small, and the cows are huge, because they wander about and eat whatever they want, which is usually garbage. Not much nutritional value there, so I'm guessing these cows aren't ideal for milk or butchering. In any case, the cars just drive around the cows...no big deal.

"Where did I park my bike?"

"Next to the cow."

On the final stretch of road to my office, its basically a highway with an overpass. We take a left "exit" and then go under the overpass. There are no real stop signs or street lights along the highway, so during rush hour, there are police on duty directing traffic, just like you might imagine in Chicago if the power failed downtown and the street lights went out. So as we're sitting there waiting for our turn from the police, I catch out of the corner of my eye, a small herd of cows walking along the road beside us. Obviously the cows can't understand the police officer, but surely they wouldn't just wander out into oncoming traffic, right? Wrong. They did.

Brown Cow in road

The cars, motorcycles, and rickshaws all slowed and swerved around the cows. The big trucks kept rolling, just like the hierarchy I had heard about. And the cows, with traffic buzzing by all around them continued to move forward through the vehicles. At one point, one of the bigger ones was shuffling along when he(?) was suddenly cut off by a large construction vehicle. The cow stopped suddenly and then turned to look back at the rest of his crew like, "Whoa guys, did you see that? I almost ran into that truck!" After the truck passed, he continued on his way, even hurrying up a bit as if he realized he should get out of the road. Once he reached the other side, he slowed to his normal walking pace.

I was in awe. I noticed my driver was amused. I mentioned to him "my friends in America would have found that very entertaining. I can't believe the cow navigated traffic so well." He said, "the cows are often more sensible than people when it comes to moving through traffic. I countered by saying, "I suppose if someone had hit the cow, it would have done more damage to the car, and the cow might not have been harmed, because they are bigger than the vehicles." He ended the conversation with this gem: "If a person had hit the cow, the people would be very angry and aggressive with him because cows are like gods to us."

Hope you guys enjoyed this week's post. I'll talk to you again soon.