In the Endless Mountains of Northeastern Pennsylvania, autumnal wildflowers dot the rolling blue-tinged evergreen slopes. A lone golden eagle soars across the cerulean sky, below it a family of deer strike their infamous caught-in-the-headlights pose before skittering off deeper into the woods. If you’re an adventure sports enthusiast or simply an outdoorsy type, there’s plenty on offer: whitewater rafting, horseback riding, skiing, hiking, sky-diving. For animal lovers, the Endless Mountains are home to one of the country’s most beautiful all-species animal sanctuaries—Indraloka.
Indraloka Animal Sanctuary, in Mehoopany, Pennsylvania, rescues animals that are destined for the slaughterhouse, euthanasia or worse—a life of endless abuse. Indraloka residents include cows, calves, horses, pigs of all breeds and sizes, two dogs, dozens of cats and kittens, goats, lambs, sheep, chickens, roosters, ducks, turkeys and one peacock.
 |
| Duncan, the pig, and his new BFF |
I don’t know how animals’ IQs are measured, but supposedly pigs are smarter than dogs. I find this fact disturbing. Here in the US eating a dog is unthinkable. Bacon, sausage, ribs, on the other hand, are some of our country’s most popular foods. I wonder if this would change if everyone had the opportunity to hang out with live pigs. On the day I visited Indraloka, two of them, Duncan and Nugget, had commandeered the lambs’ housing because they weren’t happy with their own temporary shelter. A team of “green” architecture students from Marywood University—which boasts the country’s only certified green architecture program— designed new digs for the pigs, but Hurricanes Irene and Lee put the kabosh on getting the new pad built quickly enough. All the huffing and puffing in the world was not going to get the Duncan and Nugget to move out of the lambs’ comfy home. They weren’t bullies, though. They were willing to share the space with the lambs, a group of visitors touring the sanctuary, a herd of turkeys. Pigs tend to be very easygoing creatures.
 |
| Indraloka founder Indra Lahiri |
Indraloka founder Indra Lahiri, PhD, has taken on a monumental task. Simply feeding and cleaning the animals’s housing would be a full time job for 10. Besides running the sanctuary, Indra, who holds a doctorate in organizational psychology, maintains a consultancy business. She is funding the sanctuary almost singlehandedly, proving that one person can make a difference in the lives of many.
Indraloka is Sanskrit for “God’s heaven.” I’ve visited animal sanctuaries all over the world and, usually, I walk away depressed. The horrors the animals have suffered are visible on their scarred, broken bodies, on their sad faces. Indraloka is different. The animals here look happy. After the hell they’ve been through to reach the sanctuary, it would appear they realize they’ve finally reached heaven.
 |
| I’m even cuter in person |
I visited Indraloka one week after I finished reading The Horse Whisperer. I spend a lot of time with animals and I’ve long been accused of endowing them with qualities they don’t possess. I’ve been vindicated, however. It turns out the mammalian brain is more similar across all species, including human beings, than it is different, according to the work of several Marin County, California psychiatrists, A General Theory of Love. Animals think, communicate, love, grieve. And when they are part of the food industry in the US, they suffer lives of constant torture.
In my experience most Americans are animal lovers. That the food industry is allowed to treat animals so inhumanely baffles me. Perhaps it just comes down to packaging. Animal products are packaged in a way that deliberately desensitizes consumers to the fact they are eating a sentient being who has as much right to life as they do.
 |
| Tinkerbelle, the Saint Bernard, in heaven |
For more information, please visit Indraloka online. Click here.
