A water buffalo, her calf and the only path down

The page said placid

The path was a strip of packed mud about as wide as my pack, running along the top of a rice terrace wall. On my left, the terrace dropped away in a wet green staircase. On my right, the next terrace up was already golden and half cut. I was in the Sapa highlands in the early autumn, and the harvest was on.

I had done my reading, as usual. Hoang Lien National Park sits just above the town, and the highest peak in the range, Fansipan, is listed at 3,147 metres. I knew the morning mist would burn off by noon. I knew the villages were working farms, not scenery. I had also read, on one page, that the water buffalo kept around the villages are placid animals. I wrote that sentence in my notebook with a small tick next to it, which tells you everything about me.

Ten minutes on a wall

Then I came round a bend and there she was, standing square across the path with a calf pressed against her flank. Dark, wet, enormous, steaming slightly in the cool air. The calf looked at me. She looked at me, then she lifted her head and turned her ears forward.

I stopped. I would like to say this was wisdom. It was mostly that my legs had decided before I had. The wall was too narrow to pass her and the drop on the left was a couple of metres into water and mud. I could not go round. I could not go back without turning my back on her, which felt rude and also unwise.

So I stayed where I was, which is what the page I had read about wildlife in general suggests, and what no page I had read about buffalo had prepared me for. I took one step backwards, slowly, to make the gap longer. I kept my pack on and my arms low. I did not take a photo until I was sure the phone was not part of the conversation.

The guidebook said placid. The mother buffalo had clearly not read the guidebook, and I decided to believe her instead.

What I got wrong

Here is the correction. I told myself the animal was placid because a page said so, and I read her behaviour as friendly because I wanted it to be. Her ears and her head were saying something else, and the calf was the whole reason. I am not an animal expert. I do know that a mother and a youngster change the rules, and that my notebook is not a substitute for looking.

A woman in a faded green jacket appeared on the terrace above me. She was carrying a bundle of cut rice on her back, bigger than her. Her name, as it turned out, was Giang. She did not say much, because I have about twelve words of Vietnamese and she had perhaps as many of English. She raised one palm toward me, flat, and then lowered it twice. Wait. I waited.

A small payoff

Giang walked past me with no hurry at all, spoke to the buffalo in a low flat voice, the way you might ask a tall relative to move so you could reach the kettle, and the mother stepped down onto the next terrace wall with the calf trotting after her. The path was open. Nobody had done anything dramatic.

Before I left the spot I looked back once. The two of them were already grazing on the next terrace, shoulder to shoulder, as if the last ten minutes had been my private invention. I walked on slowly, and at the next bend I stopped to write it down while it was fresh: 10:40, terrace path, buffalo and calf, waited about ten minutes, local farmer cleared it. I added a line under it. Not placid. Protective. Check the source against the animal in front of you.

The rest of the walk was quiet. The mist lifted as promised and a line of small birds sat on a bamboo fence, uninterested in me. I passed three more buffalo that afternoon, all tethered, all chewing, all clearly off duty, and I gave every one of them a wide, slow, slightly embarrassed berth.

I am still not sure I handled it perfectly. I think I handled it patiently, which is different, and on that wall it was enough. If Giang had not come along, I would have kept backing away until the buffalo moved or the path widened, and been late for lunch. That is a fair price.