Cows!

When I last posted about India, I mentioned cows four times but didn’t include a single picture. This I intend to rectify now.

I assume most people know that cows are sacred to Indians and, among other consequences, are never eaten. Some will have heard that they wander around the streets of India freely. That if they decide to sit in the middle of a road, that’s that and the drivers simply have to drive around them.

None of this is a lie, from what I saw. I even had to step aside for a cow ambling along a pavement in Jaipur, not to mention the charging cow that almost took me with it in Jaisalmer. Generally they’re quite peaceful (except in Jaisalmer fort), apparently unconcerned by pedestrians, motorbikes and several lanes of traffic approaching.

There’s a sadder side to the story, though. Because most Indians are poor, the majority cannot afford to keep feeding their cow once it stops producing milk. They will not, of course, slaughter it as we would. So the cow is turned out onto the street, to sit in the middle of roads and eat garbage. A lot of the cows are horrendously gaunt. There are some cow shelters, often run by big organisations like temples – it’s considered good merit/karma to look after cows, so those that can afford charitable works will sometimes do what they can for local cows – but the cows outnumber spaces in the shelters. I learnt all this on my first night in the country, when I gleefully pointed at cows and the man driving me from the airport to my guesthouse told me about the difficulties they face. It reminded me of the elephants in Bangkok, brought into the city by mahouts who can’t find any other work for themselves or the elephants: an unpleasant situation for the animal connected to human poverty, with no easy solution.

They’re a memorable part of my two weeks in India.

Here are a few in the middle of a road in Jaipur, just chillin’:

I often passed cows on my way up a side-road to my guesthouse in Jodhpur:

One of several cows ambling past a small street-side produce market in Jaisalmer (outside the fort):

And a cow lurking near a tunnel full of cows in Jaisalmer: