A Winter in India

This morning we were awakened by the latest in Himalayan alarm clocks. A large boom as a monkey hit the metal roof and then clatter-clatter-clatter as it ran across. Kind of like being inside a steel pan drum during Mardi Gras. The ceiling of our room was 1x6 boards covered in corrugated metal; a great sounding board. After we were up, we realized that the tree just outside our window was full of black-faced monkeys. There were two mothers, each with a baby that still looked pinkish and couldn’t have been more than a week old. There was also at least one big male, and a bunch of teen-aged thrill seeker monkeys. They would go out to the very end of a branch, bend over backwards and just let go, flipping over while dropping ten feet down to the next layer of branches below. They seemed to enjoy the landing, making the branches bounce up and down.

When we were still in Delhi, one of the dental faculty was telling us that the city monkeys have learned which are the office buildings, and know that no one will be there after 5 PM. The balconies and outside stairwells of those buildings are where they spend the night. Or as the faculty person put it, “That is where they are making merry in the night.” The day we visited the World Health Organization building in Delhi we got to see just how many monkeys that can be. The offices were just about to open (10 AM) and workmen were chasing the monkeys. It looked like an ocean of them, pouring out of every nook and cranny.

Guess we were lucky that only one bounced on our heads this morning!