Continuing my love affair with buffaloes, here is another picture taken in Varanasi that I think shows their nice personality – the way they happily let birds perch on them. I was talking to an Indian friend yesterday about my fondness for these animals and he confirmed to me what I already suspected – that they can be very affectionate. Apparently his father’s parents used to own a buffalo but when they moved house there wasn’t space for her so they had to give her away. But she wasn’t happy with the new arrangement and pined for her ‘family’ so much that she broke loose of her new home and set out to find them. So one day they got up to find their faithful old buffalo standing in the yard, having somehow tracked them down!

They may not be the prettiest of animals but they’ve got hearts of gold!