Let´s visit an interesting tropical forest where 900 monkeys divided into six groups have their home 🙂 and sanctuary. The six groups are: in front of the main temple, Michelin, eastern, central, cemeteries and south. They are primates – Macaca fascicularis – the Balinese long tailed monkey, called macaque in English.
Because they are active during the day they are all around, constantly in motion, in their beautiful forest – Sacred Monkey Sanctuary. This forest is conserved in conformity with the concept of Tri Hita Karana, from Hinduism philosophy. Tri Hita Karana is at the same time traditional philosophy for life in Bali. “Tri” means three (I find it interesting that tri also means three in my mother tonque Slovak 🙂 ), “Hita” means happiness and “Karana” means the cause or manner. Tri Hita Karana thus means “Three ways to reach spiritual and physical well-being”. These three ways comprise harmonious relations among humans, with the environment and with the Supreme God.
Yes, Tri Hita Karana. But monkeys are wild animals and there are recommendations for the visitors how to behave and what to take into consideration when visiting. I was especially worried about the danger of being bitten by a monkey. I sticked to the rules – but all of a sudden… As I was walking, a monkey landed on my shoulder with all her might. I stiffened but I did not move and I did not utter a sound. I just popped my eyes out to the limit. The monkey tried to get into my bag. There were some people standing around me and one Australian lady asked me: “Do you have some food in your bag?” I said: “No”. And she said: “But you have some paper there and she seems to think it´s a paper food bag”. I uttered: “She can have it” and I moved slightly to make it easy for the monkey to put her hand into my bag. She pulled out a newspaper I had there. When she saw what that was, in her disappointment she became mad and started throwing individual pages of the newspaper on the ground. Then the Australian lady told me: “Squat slowly, she will jump off”. I did so and it was a relief, when the monkey jumped off me. The lady asked me if I was OK. Well, I just was grateful that the monkey did not bite me.
