A couple years ago I traveled through India for about month with someone I had known for four weeks. The idea was thought of and plans were made in about a week and a half – meaning, we didn’t know what we were doing.
After buying our last-minute tickets (it only takes a few hours to fly from Bangkok to Kolkata!), I did a little research about traveling in India (backwards, I know) and realized it’s recommended to have a rabies vaccine. Since the vaccine is a series of shots spread out over several weeks, there was no time and I got on our flight telling myself I’d be fine as we weren’t planning on going anywhere really rural.
That ended up being true, I survived the month and we were never too far from a town, but I had still completely underestimated the number of situations where I could possibly get rabies. Particularly from monkeys. Which. Were. Everywhere.
I’m equally fascinated and terrified by monkeys, but usually the terror won and I spent the entire month with anxiety gripping my chest since, even walking down the street in the middle of a city, there were monkeys. These shots were all taken at the Taj Mahal where I alternated between admiring the amazing structure before me and keeping a wary eye on the monkey families walking jumping around without a care.
