Wild and Crazy

Though we are quite sure that anyone reading this blog is sick of posts about monkeys by now, we wanted to share a series of pictures showing langur monkeys (the lesser of the two evils) having fun. While Dave's sister, Beth, was still visiting us in Mussoorie, we noticed a large group of langurs sitting on the water tank outside the front door. We took some pictures through the screen door and enjoyed watching them play king of the mountain.

They also had a fun time jumping on and knocking over the furniture on our terrace.

There were even some sweet maternal moments that the monkeys shared with us.

As the langurs worked their way off the terrace and farther away from the house, we got more couragous and left the safety of the house (well...Beth and Beth did).

The best part of the monkey visit was when they climbed back up into the trees they came from.

It was amazing to see them climb to the top and jump. They were not jumping to get anywhere...they were simply having fun. They would make their way to the highest branch and propel themselves as far into the air as possible. When it looked they were about to clear all the weight-bearing branches, they would reach out at the last moment and catch a tiny twig that would keep them from crashing to the ground. This same exercise was repeated over and over again for nearly an hour, with quite a few skateboard moves thrown in to impress their observers.

This move was quite impressive:

But the best was probably this sweet flip:

Its always nice to enjoy the antics of our primate neighbors from the safety of our home, but it is really great to enjoy their wonderful aerial acrobatics.

Dave and Beth