Including this mother with baby – so cute! Had to include this pic for Susan!
Apparently the mother’s very red face means she is ready for to mate again…
They may be wild, but they are definitely used to humans – they will take bananas and nuts (one at a time, stuffing their cheek) out of your hand, and drink water from a loose-capped water bottle (one actually managed to twist the cap off) or from a half-coconut shell, even tipping it up like a cup!
I didn’t do any of that direct interaction (other guys did), but I’m heading up there again today with supplies!
Oh, and one of them kept touching my back while I was crouched taking photos and videos – they’d definitely get into a backpack or bag if you left it lying on the ground…
On an unrelated note, I was recently asked: How are you finding communicating in India? How common is English?
A: English is quite common (less so in smaller towns, but people who deal with tourists speak English, except for the canoe paddlers out of Alleppey
That being said, their English is hard to understand due to to the strong Indian accent (think Apu on The Simpsons but even stronger) – I frequently have to ask What? and Sorry? to get them to repeat it…
An exception of course is better- or foreign-educated Indians, their English is very understandable.
Note: there is a movement in India to make Hindi the official country-wide unifying language, but south India is resisting the idea because English is the common second language – hardly anyone speaks Hindi in the south. Recall that virtually every state (certainly in the south) has its own language (a Dravidian language in the south, which is very different from Hindi).