Shimla

I got attacked by a monkey that nearly ripped my ear off.

This morning, we had decided to hike Jakhu Hill, which is the highest peak in Shimla at 7800 ft. Atop this hill sits a temple dedicated to Hanuman, the Hindu monkey god. There is an arch at the temple entrance, and beyond that lie stairs that are guarded by monkeys. There was a sign on the arch that said to stow away "packets, purses, goggles". I thought it was strange that they mentioned "goggles", and I did not give it any further thought, not realizing that they meant "eyeglasses". So we go up the stairs, ignoring the monkeys that were sitting along the sidelines.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, my left peripheral vision caught something moving towards me at the speed of a ballistic missile. Approximately 0.01 seconds before it struck, I realized that it was a monkey.

Then it hit.

It slammed into the side of my face, intent on ripping my eyeglasses away from me. I felt sharp objects dig into my ear, and I tumbled towards the right due to the force of the impact. In that fraction of a second, I realized that I was under attack and feared two things:

1) Other monkeys were about to join in and tear me limb from limb
2) This monkey was about to imitate Mike Tyson and bite my ear off

I flailed and screamed (a manly scream, of course), which startled the monkey who then launched himself off my face and away from me. I put my hand up to my ear, fearing the worst, but the damage was only minor, thankfully. The monkey had scratched up my ear and had drawn a little bit of blood, but it seems that this was only done with his nails, and not his teeth. He failed in his attempt to steal my glasses, and we quickly walked back down the stairs.

This time, we armed ourselves with some sticks, and made a 2nd attempt to climb the stairs. I removed my eyeglasses and put them in my pocket. Wearing them was like dangling meat in front of a lion. This time, we managed to make it up unscathed and were able to visit the temple. The downside was that I was blind because I was not wearing my glasses.

After visiting the temple, we approached the stairs to make our way down. The attack had disturbed the core of my soul, and I had lost all my confidence dealing with monkeys. I stood at the top of the flight of stairs, staring at all the monkeys lining the sides of the stairs.

They stared back at me, as if they were daring me to come down. We went down slowly, rattling our sticks against the stairs to warn the monkeys not to come near us. Anytime a monkey scampered about, I twitched. They did not bother us this time, and we safely made our escape down Jakhu Hill.

This was not the last death-defying experience of the day; we had decided, instead of taking the train back down the mountain, to take a bus back down the mountain to Chandigarh so that we could save a few hours of time (the train runs on narrow-guage track and is really slow). We knew what the risks were; two days earlier, four people were killed when a bus overturned after taking a curve too fast. Also, many vehicles veer off the road for whatever reason and end up falling into a gorge.

So we take the bus, and the driver drove the bus like how everybody drives around here: very fast, and weaving in and out of traffic. This, despite the fact that we're traveling down a VERY curvy mountain road with practically non-existent barriers in many areas. The bus was careening around curves and bombing corners like there was no tomorrow. It was quite scary and nauseating at the same time, so it's a good thing that I had brought some Gravol (equivalent to Dramamine for my American readers). People were throwing up due to the extreme motion changes when going around all the curves. There was a worker on the bus who was keeping an eye on people that looked like they were going to puke. When he saw somebody on the verge, he would yell "Sheesha KHOL DEY!!!", meaning "Open your window!!"

Along the way, we saw a truck flipped over way down the mountain, as if to remind us of the consequences of driver error or brake/tire malfunction. However, as evidenced by the fact that this blog post exists, we made it safe and sound!

Shimla itself offers grand views of the mountain ranges, the lower foothills of the Himalayas. Also, it's COLD there at this time of year....and houses do not have any central heating there...definitely a good thing that I brought my jacket!