I really like looking at monkeys as long as they are far enough away from me.
We started calling them bandars in India. One day we were walking down the street in Rishikesh and heard a group of kids screaming “bandar, bandar!” and then realized they were talking about the monkeys.
At Angkor, I got sucked into the monkey feeding racket. There’s a highly socialized troupe of monkeys by the side of the road, who have plenty of food to eat due to the tourists feeding them bananas and some other odd fruit that local vendors sell. I couldn’t resist this seemingly safe opportunity to have a moment with a baby monkey.
These guys here are more like bandars. A whole group of them attacked this motorcycle. One took to tugging on the mirror, another tried to rip off the mud flap. Mom kept watch and a couple babies were hopping around. All was fine until a baby tried to attack me and I ran away.
And finally, in monkey news of the week – Langurs have been hired to keep away those pesky macaque monkeys at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi.