I searched, I found: Monkey Forest

You know how sometimes the most unexpected things turn up in the most unexpected places?

Well, it happened to me in The Monkey Temple of Ubud.

A monkey steals a banana from some rabid Australians

Having spent some quality time with acquaintances from Perth (Thanks Sven & Jo!) who most generously subsidised our meagre backpackers budget to allow us to dine out in style for a change, the most peculiar thing happened one hung-over morning.

Sven didn’t join us this day, but what he would have seen upon arrival would have made him squirm.

Monkey Forest is a popular attraction of the town, where one can see potentially rabid monkeys being fed by obviously rabid families of ocker Australians,

Dodging the predictable Bintang singlet wearing men and boys, (we bought “The Boy” one as an ironic gesture) who were quite happy to allow wild beasts to leap all over them and take bananas from their hands, heads and wherever else they could stuff them, we made our way to the Temple complex, donned some sash-strung sarongs and took a wander inside.

A Monkey, Monkey temple, Monkey Forest.

The temple was full of wild monkeys (less ockers, as temple entry involved tieing a knot in ones sash so I guess they were precluded on this basis), but also had a fair number of rather weathered stone sculptures.

There in the outer courtyard it stood.

A sculpture.

Not any old sculpture, but of the very thing I had searched for all over the Indian subcontinent but failed to find in a year and a half.

The bodily form of a man, but from the neck up, clearly a canine.

A Doghead. Found.

My search was over.

I had found a Doghead.

My Indian blog “In search of The Dogheads” had drawn an unequivocal blank on these mythical beasts of the East.

Little did I realise they were a Balinese speciality!

Re-evaluation of blog strapline required.

“I searched, I failed.

And then I accidentally found one in Ubud.”

Happy days.