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You know, this headline sounds funny, but those monkeys are terrifying—I am speaking from personal experience!!! :-O

In 1995, I visit India for the first time (my husband is from Bangalore). We went on a weeklong tourist jaunt from his home town up to New Delhi. (Train ride took 36 hours or so).

In Delhi we visited all the local attractions. Many of the tombs of famous Moguls (Muslim rulers who ran India for a long time) are beautiful buildings (including the Taj Mahal—did you know it’s a mausoleum?)—anyway, to reach the actual buildings you have to go through huge ‘gates’ (archways) and cross large plazas.

We visited one such place one day, and my husband left me alone basically in the middle of the plaza while he went to ask some questions of a tour guide a good distance away.
I was fine standing there by myself, admiring the beautiful architecture and gardens, etc. when suddenly, I found myself surrounded LITERALLY by a band of these monkeys scrabbling around me! There were about 25 or 30 of them, and a young boy of about 8 ran over with a bag of monkey food in his hand. He started shouting a me in Hindi (while I stood there frozen—those monkeys have VERY sharp canines!!! Yikes!) while the monkeys were pawing me...some were as high as my hips before they stretched, and I’m 5’6”!! :-O

One of the few times in my life I was scared to death! Fortunately my husband came rushing over and scattered the monkeys and yelled at the kid to get lost (the kid was trying to get money from me for monkey treats) and almost instantly we were alone again on the plaza.

I just wish I’d had the presence of mind at the time to take a picture, but being terrified, it never crossed my mind!!

The sacred cows and buffalos tend to wander around by themselves (generally old animals that Hindus won’t kill but set free that are eventually gathered up by meat eaters who slaughter them for their meat)—the few I saw were very gentle docile animals that people would touch and pray to when they passed on the street—I’d take those over killer monkeys ANY day of the week.