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Published: January 9th 2006
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Feeding the Monkeys
This is me feeding the monkeys. The best idea I had today was to visit the Monkey temple. A gal from my bellydancing class told me that the monkey temple was her favorite part of Jaipur.
It is out of the city to the east, set in some cliffs. You drive through an older area, full of crumbling old havelis and city walls. At Galta, there are some old temples, then a number of deep tanks. Tanks for water are common here, for storing the bounty of the Monsoon for the rest of the year in the desert climate. This tank is supposed to be very deep and was brimming with dark water. On one end, seemingly carved into the cliffside, there was a palace-like edifice with beautiful, but decaying paintings. All around, monkeys. Monkeys were coming down the cliffs, drinking water from the tank, jumping along the walls, fighting eachother. I had bought peanuts at the gate to feed them for 20Rs and it was going well, with me tossing the peanuts to them. Then a mob of monkeys came for the bag and tore it out of my hands, and then they fought wildly for it. It reminded me of the little girl that Alli and I gave a light-up pen to, at a train stopping out in the countryside. As soon as we handed it to her (thinking we were being nice), a bunch of other girls started to fight with her for it and it broke in the struggle. That taught us not to give out anything. Anyway, I leaped away from the monkeys and we made our way up to the temples above this tank. I wish I could better describe this atmospheric place. Spilling into the tank, water came out of the cliff through a carving of a cow.
We met an old priest who brought us into a small shrine built at the top of the cliffs and pointed out all the gods - Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, and an image of the Sadhu who lived here 500 years ago, drinking only cow's milk for sustenance. He gave us a red dot on the head and we made a donation to his temple.
Then we visited the next tiny shrine, where a young man in a long orange sarong showed us the image of Hanuman the monkey god and gave us an orange dot in the middle of our red dot. He also gave us some sugar, the "food of the gods". Naturally we made another donation. Then he had me hold his albino white bunny. Alli took a picture of us naturally, and I was surprised when this young priest put his arm around me. The bunny got white hair all over me, and I was even more surprised when the young man tried to rub the white bunny hair off of my breasts! I jumped away and said "I don't think that's appropriate for you to do." He got all flustered and it could have been totally innocent, so we cleared the matter up and told him not to worry about it, but just that it isn't something he should do to women.
Outside, another young priest convinced us to feed the monkeys. Holding the sugar nodules, I put my hand out gingerly and a monkey reached into my hand and took the food. Their hands feel so much like our hands, tiny, leathery and furless. They don't have claws like most creatures. We must have fed dozens of monkeys, before we convinced the full complement of priests (the old and two young ones) to let us leave before sunset made it too dark to return down the path. On the way down, I gave my last remaining monkey food to a monkey we'll call "lefty". "Lefty" only had one arm and he was all alone on the stairs, and we took pity on him.
I wish we had more time to explore this place, as it was very interesting. We also coudl have walked up the hill to the Surya Mandir - Sun Temple - where the views of Jaipur are quite good. Unfortunately we arrived quite late due to traffic and the time we spent at the tailor shop. On the way, there were hundreds of people on one road with goats, preparing for a Muslim festival where goats are slaughtered. This is quite the country for festive occasions.
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