Goodbyes and monkeys

I said a very quick goodbye to Mark and Lucy. I felt like I got kicked in the gut when they drove away in the rickshaw. It's the same feeling I had when Iain, Adrian, and I parted ways as well as with Gerald and Hermance.

It doesn't take long for me to get used to having people around me, especially when travelling with them. If they are like minded people, it's a quick and strong connection because we spend most of the day together. Because of the amount of time spent together, we get to know each other fairly quickly and they become my surrogate family for the time we are together.

. . .

I'm in Agra now and saw the Taj Mahal this morning as I arrived on the train. The hotel I'm staying at has a perfect view of the Taj from it's roof top. While I was sitting up there listening to Weezer (Holiday) and doing a little bit of writing, a good sized monkey appeared just three feet away from me. I was a bit startled cause it knocked over a chair. We stared at each other for a moment and I looked away feigning boredom. What I really thought was if it lost the stare down it would get pissed and chew off my face. It just ate the mango peels someone left out and went down the side of the building.

Speaking of monkeys there is only one black faced monkey with a long prehenstile tail living in Varanasi. This monkey rules the neighborhood and strikes fear in the hearts of all the other monkeys. When it leaps from building to building it's one of the most graceful things I've ever seen. The neighborhood people scream and shout out of love and hate for it when it appears in the morning and evening.

The black faced monkey is a smart one as well. One of the guys in the neighborhood attacked it with a stick. The monkey followed the guy back to his room and waited for him to come out. A small monkey is intimidating enough, but the black faced one looks like it's the size of a small child.