April 15, 2010 Thinking About Jackals

Rather blurry pictures of jackals from Bharatpur in Rajasthan in 2002. They were hunting in a pack in the tall grass at the bird sanctuary.

For the past few nights I’ve been hearing a lot of jackals howling. This is fairly common and I rather like the sound. It’s not like a wolf or a dog howl.

Some local people liken it to a baby crying or people wailing in anguish. In some cases I agree but it also has the ‘doggish’ quality to it that sets it apart. Some people also tell me that to hear it often means that tragedy is just around the corner. That something bad is going to happen.

Well something bad is always going to happen somewhere and I don’t think the jackals have much to do with it.

In a place I used to live here I was up on a hillside. The jackals would traverse the hill just below my place every night so I got to hear them a lot.

The owner of the place lived upstairs and had a nice garden. He had tried to put a koi pond in the back but the jackals kept coming in and eating all the koi. Then he put a fence around the pond and the jackals still kept getting in. One of them drowned in the pond. That was the end of the fish pond. It became a lily pond instead.

I really liked living in that house. It was my favorite of all the places I’ve lived here. I was there for about a year and a half. The only problem was the hillside it was on was right above the Mall Road in the center of town and there was a huge amount of noise day and night especially in tourist season (April-July) and wedding season (November-February). And being in the center of town is not the best thing as the tourists get a little rowdy. There were a couple of times some drunk guys tried to follow me home from the market but since I know the terrain I gave them the slip. Drunk guys are the same everywhere. Thinking they are way more attractive and irresistible than they really are.

So today is the second day without Internet connection. I don’t know if it is the balance amount left on the connection, though I’ve just recharged it today-it should have been good for 2 more weeks on the monthly plan. But it’s quite likely due to the Maha Kumbh Mela that is taking place in Haridwar which is nearby. This meeting takes place every 12 years and all the holy guys (sadhus, yogis and others) from all over India come for it. As do several million pilgrims. It has been going on since January and certain days are more auspicious than others. Yesterday was super super auspicious. A day that only comes around every 700 years or something like that.

I just read in the newspaper that there were over 1 crore there yesterday. That is more than 10 million.

The past couple of days are the last for dipping into the Ganga river and getting cleansed. There are millions of people there and in the Hindi paper today Manoj told me that they are reporting about cell phone networks being totally jammed. So I just have to wait it out. If there is no connection by tomorrow (I am writing this offline with Windows Live Writer-one of the best products Windows ever made-and I’m not a big Windows fan) I’ll have to get a local guy I know to call his friend who has network access in Dehra Dun to check the connection and make sure everything is OK. One time before he just had to check some little box and save the particulars of our account and it worked fine. The problem is with authentication and error 619-this has happened before and has always been rectified so am not too worried.

But I miss chatting with my sister on Facebook in the morning as she is sometimes on in the evening there so we get to meet up.

Anyways so that is why I have time to think about jackals and write another post on this blog. I’ve done up a few more for other blogs too so when the connection comes there will soon be more fresh material.

I am going to start filling in more on this blog with some posts I’ve done elsewhere but which relate to life here. Sort of bring it more together.  It will be mostly trekking stuff at first and then I’ll fill it in better when I get a chance.

My neighbors brought over their St. Bernard pups yesterday. Hard to call them pups though. They are both only 9 months old but enormous. Their names are Alpine and Daisy. They are both sweet but kind of dumb. They are very well cared for but the neighbors are having some training problems with them. They are very determined dogs and somewhat hard to handle especially together. They are in chest harnesses so they can be more easily held onto. Talk about strong dogs though! I think they are just lovely dogs. I hope Chandu brings them again.

That’s it.