On livestock

My first thought on coming to India: there is a cow in the middle of the highway. A few thoughts later: there are dogs, water buffalo, and pigs on the side street. The rest of my experience has been similar: I have had more weird animal encounters here than I ever did the US. I have stared down a camel, avoided eye contact with a monkey (turns out they will run after you if you look too closely), had a stand-off on a mountainside with a goat, almost was stepped on by an elephant, and have had several awkward encounters with cows.

Here’s a good example of my interaction with cows. These animals are like rats here—they are ALL over the place. You are not supposed to kill cows in Hinduism (like pigs for Muslims and Cheeseburgers for Jews); in Delhi, it is actually ILLEGAL to slaughter a cow…yay separation of church and state. Because of this, the cows are always in the road. I have already seen one accident when a cow took out a motorbike—cow and driver went flying and traffic stopped. I can’t count the number of traffic jams caused by cows hanging out in the middle of the road. Vinod, my driver, loves to see my reaction to these animals. The picture below is an encounter with a cow in Jaipur: I can’t tell who looks more disturbed, me or the cow. One other story: my friend Altaf likes to point at the cows and yell “steak” and both of us have pretended to chase one down the street with fork and knife in hand—yay weird Muslim-Christian jokes!

So…me and the goat. I have a history with goats. My childhood friend Megan Williamson had three of these creatures, and I have distinct memory of one of them butting me. It hurt…a lot. So when I was climbing down from a waterfall in the Himalayas at McLeod Ganj, I was not so excited to see a goat blocking the path forward. Just to give you an idea of the situation: there is only a narrow ledge and then a drop down to the bottom of the water fall. And on that narrow ledge is a goat eating his lunch. Josh quickly scampered by and then did not offer any help (so nice!). He did, however, snap this picture as I tried to sneak cautiously by the snacking goat. I was terrified this goat was going to butt me all the way down the waterfall as I am sure you can see in my facial expression. I think the goat was annoyed I disturbed his lunch.