Pressure from animal rights activists has resulted in many Indian snake charmer’s snakes, (mostly cobras one of India’s endangered reptiles,) being impounded. What to do? Enterprisingly, the newly unemployed Indian snake charmers have started to play their flutes at weddings and world festivals.

“We now have accepted the fact that we cannot perform with snakes,” said Hawa Singh Nath, a wiry, bearded 68-year-old charmer who lives in the suburbs of the capital, New Delhi. “We are hardly earning half of what we used to earn before,” Nath said. “Many are going to the cities and most of our children do not want to take up our profession. We have no regrets that they won’t play the flute. We need to do other jobs now to survive.”

Nath himself performed his 300-year-old music at the Dubai film festival in 2005, while others have travelled to the U.K. and Middle East or put on special wedding or birthday party shows. Other charmers have turned the tables and some now work at animal centres and forestry offices, educating visitors about snakes.