Bali: Ubud’s Sacred Monkey Reserve
Monkey Forest Road in Ubud terminates at the Monkey Forest Reserve – well actually it doesn’t terminate, but joins Jalan Hanoman (the monkey hero of the Ramayana) and swings back into town. But at this southern end of the town you can enter the reserve, paying a modest price to do so, and with the option of buying bananas for the inhabitants. It contains a whole slew of monkeys; I’ve seen estimates of 340, and new ones are being born all the time.
Naturally, since it’s Bali it has to have sculptures, and the biggest one in the middle of the sanctuary is an ornate swimming pool or bathtub-cum-fountain for the monkeys. They like it and hop in and out, and push each other around in the water like other primates I’ve seen.
The walkway to the bathtub has a concrete berm on the downhill side, where the monkeys line up. They eat the bananas that people bring them, take naps, feed their young, and interact with people. This boy scampered from the entrance to the berm and invited the monkey to play by sitting on the berm:
Note that the monkey has a buddy who has refrained from climbing the boy. I don’t know if they take turns, or if they decided he wasn’t big enough for two, but at any rate they didn’t gang up on him, which was nice. Actually, after closer inspection I’ve decided the buddy may have been preoccupied with nursing her baby.
The monkey took it to a higher level….
Everyone’s happy, and we have a photo op for the boy’s mother. And me, of course.
Of course there’s a temple in the Monkey Sanctuary. It’s not dedicated to Hanoman, but it is definitely monkey-dominated, and I noticed that they don’t keep a lot of delicate materials in the most accessible parts. You can see here the large sheltered platforms that would be used as dance venues ifa dance were scheduled. Despite the monkey access they’re very clean, so they must have a pretty devoted attendant keeping them that way. Human visitors must wear sarongs and sashes (available at the temple entrance) and then they can take even more monkey pictures.
Outside the temple there are lots of monkey statues along the walkways that divide the temple precincts from the surrounding jungle:
These statues look unnervingly lifelike. For comparison here’s a live nursing mother with her tiny baby:
The only unlifelike monkey statue is the giant Hanoman at a different entrance, in an attitude of prayer that I didn’t see any real monkeys assuming; it must be Hanoman, as it’s wearing the sacred checked cloth sarong and has a wise and blissed-out expression appropriate to a devotee of Shiva:
The monkeys like statues as well as fountains:
Or maybe they just like climbing to higher places. One grabbed the end of my pink umbrella and was considering whether he should climb up it, and then up my arm to the top of my head, but I persuaded him not to.
And that’s the end of my Bali blogging. I’ve spent almost as much time editing photos and posting them as I did on Bali. Which means it must be time to go back and see some more!