Cobra Update

In response to your question, yes, you do still see snake charmers with cobras on the streets in India. But the cobras look about as lively as the carved wooden cobras the hawkers push at you through tour bus windows: I assume they are pretty well doped and probably defanged. One giveaway is that the charmers are watching the tourists a lot more carefully than they are watching the snakes. In one case, I saw a snake lean a bit too close to a charmer; the charmer thwacked the cobra under the chin.