2/ 100 Headlight Dog

Having learned from the mistakes of our first two visits to Delhi we decided to avoid choosing a hotel near the centre of the city and instead chose peaceful nights and quiet streets while we acclimatised to India. Our apartment for the first few days of this particular trip was in the upmarket (relatively speaking) southern enclave of Hauz Khas.

Home to some pretty wealthy people (with very fancy cars), and our wonderful apartment, Hauz Khas was the ideal place to recover from the long flight and we loved it there. As it was the home to many people who saw themselves as being the target of crime it was almost a gated village. In addition to the sentinels, who who stand to attention next to their gate in the evening, many of the houses also had a little sentry box of their own which was home to a private security guard. As this was the winter time those guards would sit dozing around a campfire in small groups each evening, swaddled in blankets.

Many of those little sentry boxes had a little kennel next to them. I couldn’t honestly tell you that they were inhabited by a guard dog because they were usually empty, but there would always be a dog mooching around somewhere close by. We were told that the dogs don’t really belong to the guards, rather the guards befriend them and offer them food and shelter. In exchange for what perhaps? Company, warmth, or an early warning of trouble approaching maybe?

The dog in this photograph was always sat in this junction in the darkness, just slightly away from the box it was given to live in. All the cars came flying around the bend from behind us, each one swerving to miss the dog that was, in turn, completely unfazed by the imminent danger and had no intention of moving.