It was a rough
start to work in the villages this morning. People in the first few villages
just wanted us to kill the dogs, and there were very few dogs to be found. Kids
in one of the larger villages where we only found five dogs told us that recently
they had paid someone about $1 per dog to give them some sort of fatal
injection. He said they killed 100 dogs, but I’m sure that’s an exaggeration,
as most villages don’t have more than 30 or 40. Without much success in our
vaccination efforts, the heat felt even more intense. We did do much better in
a few of the villages, and downing two coconuts definitely helped too. Despite
the really slow start, we were able to vaccinate 49 dogs today, so are staying
on target with our goal. One of the villages (probably more of a town) had a
lot more owned dogs so those were definitely easier to vaccinate. There were a
few pups that were too young to vaccinate but still very good for cuddling –
that is, until one left me a nice present in my pocket and on my shoe. I seem
to have that kind of luck here.
After a long day
of vaccination and playing with lots of young creatures (human and goat kids,
puppies, and young water buffalo), we headed out towards the hills with our dog
catchers to visit a temple filled with monkeys. Yes, I guess my blog is very monkey-centered lately. The driver said that it was
10km away round trip, but it turned out to be 22km each way – still more than
worth it. We stopped for lunch at a local restaurant - my first time aside from
snacks eating in a non-hotel eatery. It was packed but we got the one empty
table and were given plates topped with giant leaves. Our food was placed on
the leaves, which can be thrown away and the plates don’t get dirty. I was very surprised that the biryani and
plantain curry, not made to order, were not too spicy and I was actually able
to easily eat them!
As we drove a
bit further up into the hills, it started to drizzle. Up an extremely narrow
road through which the ambulance barely fit, back to the extreme greenery and
amazing views of the hillside that we had seen on our train ride on the way to Araku Valley.
After parking the car, we pulled out the gigantic branch of bananas that we had
purchased down in the town below. Yanked all of the bananas off of the stalk to
fill a box and a bag, as the branch itself was ridiculously heavy and we had a
ways to walk (the picture is after we'd picked more than half the bananas off). It was then that the rain started to come down like crazy. This
was my second experience of intense monsoon rains, the first being one
afternoon at the shelter where everyone had to stop all of their work and hide
inside to watch the downpour.
We stood under
a shelter and were semi-protected from the rain as we watched it pummel down
the staircases in little waterfalls. A group of women standing with us decided to
brave the rain before we did, and I was impressed as they, in their long saris,
made their way up the stairs in the pounding rain. After a little while, the
rain calmed down slightly and we too began to trek up to visit the monkeys.
After several staircases, we reached another shelter – didn’t do much good at
this point when we were already sopping wet, but it was nice to stop for a
minute and look down at the world below us, extra beautiful with the rain.
A few of the
monkeys from the trees above noticed that we were carrying bananas and we soon
had a few friends running over to us, chattering their little monkey sounds and
wanting one banana after another. More and more monkeys joined them, some
juveniles on their own, a few big alpha males, and lots of mothers carrying
their babies close. We held sticks in our hands to keep them from getting too
close, as they can be extremely aggressive and possessive about bananas; we
definitely saw a few monkey scuffles. After throwing bananas out to the group
who joined us there, we continued up another flight of stairs to go deeper into
monkey heaven.
By this time the rain had slowed to a drizzle and more
monkeys continued to climb down out of the trees. Some sat on the banisters and
the walls, others sat on rocks by the river looking out onto the gorgeous waterfall,
and others scrambled around near our feet begging for more bananas. The mothers
would sometimes put their tiny babies down for a moment, but the babies either
panicked and ran frantically back to mom or the mom would notice us watching
and immediately snatch the baby up and show us her teeth. We saw one poor
monkey with a wire embedded in her hand to the extent that she could not use
it. We had dog nets in the car, but monkey catching in an area surrounded by
hundreds of monkeys isn’t the best idea, so there wasn’t anything we could do
for her. After about fifteen minutes, we had exhausted our huge stash of
bananas. The monkeys were less happy about having us in their territory when we
had nothing more to offer, so we slowly descended back down the stairs with me
at the rear, wanting to stay back and watch them for much longer.
We went down a
side set of very steep stairs to visit another little waterfall. Rock hopped
and waded through the river to get to its base, and then walked up another set
of stairs to see it from the top. There weren’t any monkeys this far down, but
no one was around but our little group. The sounds of the drizzle and the water
continuing to rush down the stairs, the splashes of the waterfall, the
chattering of the monkeys hidden up in the trees, and the hills and trees forever
in the distance.
But soon it was
back in the car and time to head home. A little ways in, the rain started up
again even more intensely. There were times where the sheets or rain were
coming down so hard that you could hardly see a few feet in front of you.
Luckily people soon moved under shelters so there wasn’t the usual bustle of
people on the sides of the road who we were unable to see. Before it was
raining or flooding too badly, there were still various animals crossing the
road. Luckily chickens here tend to stay along the sides and are found more in
the villages than on main roads, but there are constantly cattle and dogs. We
had an encounter today where a group of water buffalo decided to stop in the
middle of their trek across the road and stare at us through the windshield before
their handler got them to move on. As we drove along, we hit a few strangely
dry patches where the ground had not seen a drop of rain. I rolled the window
down and stuck my head out into the fresh breeze with the dark clouds looming
in the distance, and soon we were back into torrential downpours. The roads
began to flood, and the car sent tall jets of water into the air as we pulled
on through. Motorcylists stopped and waited under overhangs. Somehow the autos
continued on, though it can’t have been pleasant so low to the ground and with
no doors or windows.
The holes in the road were all filled with water, so it
was quite a bumpy ride as there was no way to differentiate where to drive. As
it got worse, it felt like we were driving through a river, trash rushing by on
the sides, muddy waters on the smaller roads, some of them completely flooded. The
ambulance turned out not to be water-tight as the rain managed to gush in
occasionally at our feet, and we had to keep the windows open slightly to
prevent them from steaming up. The driver did a good job of navigating the
river roads and we eventually made it back to the hotel.
Safe in our ambulance, it was a really cool experience to be
out during the monsoon and watch the skies pouring down. But especially given
that I’ve spent the last several days in villages with poor infrastructure and
have seen awful reports of the floods in the north over the last month, I was
extremely glad when the rain stopped soon after we got home. Hopefully the
villages weren’t hit too badly and the roads clear up soon. Hopefully there won’t
be any unpleasant surprises when we head out there tomorrow for the last time.
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