Holy Cow!

Like probably most people, I knew that cows are sacred animals in India and that they can pretty much do as they please without getting into trouble. However, seeing this in reality is quite a thing – there are cows EVERYWHERE here and even our hosts from other regions of India say that Jamnagar seems to be somewhat of a cow-heaven and that the selfish behaviour of Jamnagar Cows would not be acceptable in other cities ;-)

Take a look at some cow snapshots…

 

 

As we’re on the subject, I thought to dedicate today’s blog to the various animals we have so far encountered during our trip to India as I’ve found this to be very exciting and I hope you also enjoy it.

Here are some interesting critters we spotted today (both were about the size of half a hand!)

We went to the Khijadiya bird sanctuary today and saw some lovely wildlife:

Sadly though, I didn’t manage to take a picture of the ca. 4 foot (!) long snake crossing our path. Some people maintain it was a python but I’m not convinced as our guide tried to run after it to catch it as he found it soooo exciting; he said all he’d ever see was birds… (I am wondering if he understands that that’s supposed to happen when you work in a bird sanctuary…?)

And here’s a picture of a little squirrel (?) which is regularly running around the hotel garden (luckily its not as big as the one I was warned about before going to India which apparently had the size of a small dog… :-)

Even more fun though are the camels! Here in Jamnagar they are used to carry all sorts of loads and we’ve so far seen at least 6 different camels (one regularly comes past our hotel in the morning!), some domesticated and others seem to be “wild camels”.

My favourite picture is this of the two “kissing camels” – aren’t they cute?!

Besides “animal spotting”, we spend yesterday exploring the local market (fun!) and were treated by our clients to a lovely dinner at the “Oil club” where the resident chef did wonders to our spice-infected bodies and created a very delicious meal without ANY chillies!!! Needless to say that we thought this was the best meal we’ve had so far!

After our trip to the bird sanctuary we also went to the local (very, very, very dirty) beach (although that didn't deter the locals to go for a "swim") and some of us were brave enough to go for a little boat ride.

 I stayed on shore though (true to our clients’ motto “Safety first, avoid the worst”).

To end the weekend on another “first” experience, we headed to the movies to see the latest Bollywood Blockbuster “Chennai Express” tonight which was great fun (it was in Hindhi and there were no subtitles but as the plot was not exactly rocket science we managed to figure out who the good and bad guys were and even understood that there was a happy end :-)

Hope you all also had a great weekend and tomorrow a good start to the new week!