Gentle Reader:
During my voyages in the Sub-Continent, I kept a record of my adventures through my "Myspace" page. Several people told me that they really enjoyed following my adventures online. For those of you who liked vicariously stumbling baffled around a foreign country with me, I have decided to take my travel log to a nicer, more, accessible website. My latest sojourn will be an approximately three week long tour of Arizona with Catskill Puppets. from Phoenix I will board a plane to Guatemala City. I will be in Central America for 10 days. I'm going simply because it's possible for me to do so. What will I be doing there, you ask and where will I go? You'll simply have to read to find out. After that...who knows? Let's just say it might be a good idea for me to keep a place to record my adventures. If you missed out on the fun the first time around, or want to re read the India dispatches, I've re-posted all of them on this blog .
So why call it " Tourist Monkey"?
Well.....
On my first morning in India I established the rhythm that would govern my entire tenure on Paradise beach. I enjoyed a prolonged hike through the surrounding forests, a leisurely swim in the Arabian Sea and ate a sumptuous late breakfast at Om Shanti Garden. Now that my responsibilities had been tended to, I joined the rest of the crowd lounging in the coconut grove waiting patiently for the sand to become cool enough to walk on again. To kill time, I had brought along a few carving tools. I was determined to discover if coconut husk was a workable medium.
One of the key rules to life in India is that if you sit still for long enough, someone will eventually attempt to sell you something. Sure enough, within half an hour a pair of 11 or 12 year old boys arrived carrying a large array of beads and a cheerfully hopeful expression. I scowled. I did not want any beads I informed them. I expected them to walk off dejected and defeated by my strong resolve to not purchase any further ornamentation and to start pestering a knot of nearby Germans instead.
As I said, I had not been in India very long. Another key rule of life there is that things seldom turn out the way you expect.
If anything, their grins broadened. they plopped down in front of me and introduced themselves. The spokesman for the group introduced himself somewhat incongruously as Jack. His silent partner was more plausibly called Raju. Jack explained that Raju didn't speak much English (A claim that I later found to be entirely false when I encountered him alone in Gokarna). We shook hands. The boys discarded their merchandise in the sand and Jack proceeded with what i came to call the standard interrogation. They wanted to know where i came from, my name, my occupation, future plans, how many brothers and sisters i had, whether i was married and who my favorite Cricket players and professional wrestlers were. I could tell they were authentically interested because during the course of an hour long conversation, they only half-heartedly tried to sell me beads twice. Maybe forty five minutes into the dialogue, the subject of animals was introduced. They expressed astonishment that there were no elephants or tigers in America. I was assured that both animals were common on this beach (They aren't.). Jack then asked me what animals I had seen so far. I boasted that I had seen a monkey that morning (this to Indians is equivalent to bragging about squirrel sightings). Jack inquired if it was a black faced or white faced monkey. It happened to be a Hanuman Langur, which has a face that appears to have been dipped in ink. I told him so.
Jack nodded knowingly, and with the air of a professor announced:
"Oh yes. Those monkeys are the ones who live around here. The white faced monkeys are the tourist monkeys".
I somehow did not laugh. I also resolved that if my travel stories ever went anywhere, they couldn't have a better title
-J
During my voyages in the Sub-Continent, I kept a record of my adventures through my "Myspace" page. Several people told me that they really enjoyed following my adventures online. For those of you who liked vicariously stumbling baffled around a foreign country with me, I have decided to take my travel log to a nicer, more, accessible website. My latest sojourn will be an approximately three week long tour of Arizona with Catskill Puppets. from Phoenix I will board a plane to Guatemala City. I will be in Central America for 10 days. I'm going simply because it's possible for me to do so. What will I be doing there, you ask and where will I go? You'll simply have to read to find out. After that...who knows? Let's just say it might be a good idea for me to keep a place to record my adventures. If you missed out on the fun the first time around, or want to re read the India dispatches, I've re-posted all of them on this blog .
So why call it " Tourist Monkey"?
Well.....
On my first morning in India I established the rhythm that would govern my entire tenure on Paradise beach. I enjoyed a prolonged hike through the surrounding forests, a leisurely swim in the Arabian Sea and ate a sumptuous late breakfast at Om Shanti Garden. Now that my responsibilities had been tended to, I joined the rest of the crowd lounging in the coconut grove waiting patiently for the sand to become cool enough to walk on again. To kill time, I had brought along a few carving tools. I was determined to discover if coconut husk was a workable medium.
One of the key rules to life in India is that if you sit still for long enough, someone will eventually attempt to sell you something. Sure enough, within half an hour a pair of 11 or 12 year old boys arrived carrying a large array of beads and a cheerfully hopeful expression. I scowled. I did not want any beads I informed them. I expected them to walk off dejected and defeated by my strong resolve to not purchase any further ornamentation and to start pestering a knot of nearby Germans instead.
As I said, I had not been in India very long. Another key rule of life there is that things seldom turn out the way you expect.
If anything, their grins broadened. they plopped down in front of me and introduced themselves. The spokesman for the group introduced himself somewhat incongruously as Jack. His silent partner was more plausibly called Raju. Jack explained that Raju didn't speak much English (A claim that I later found to be entirely false when I encountered him alone in Gokarna). We shook hands. The boys discarded their merchandise in the sand and Jack proceeded with what i came to call the standard interrogation. They wanted to know where i came from, my name, my occupation, future plans, how many brothers and sisters i had, whether i was married and who my favorite Cricket players and professional wrestlers were. I could tell they were authentically interested because during the course of an hour long conversation, they only half-heartedly tried to sell me beads twice. Maybe forty five minutes into the dialogue, the subject of animals was introduced. They expressed astonishment that there were no elephants or tigers in America. I was assured that both animals were common on this beach (They aren't.). Jack then asked me what animals I had seen so far. I boasted that I had seen a monkey that morning (this to Indians is equivalent to bragging about squirrel sightings). Jack inquired if it was a black faced or white faced monkey. It happened to be a Hanuman Langur, which has a face that appears to have been dipped in ink. I told him so.
Jack nodded knowingly, and with the air of a professor announced:
"Oh yes. Those monkeys are the ones who live around here. The white faced monkeys are the tourist monkeys".
I somehow did not laugh. I also resolved that if my travel stories ever went anywhere, they couldn't have a better title
-J
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