Arriving in Jaipur - meeting monkeys and watching the sun set.

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The sixteenth day was a very early start, we had a train to catch at 6am so had to hop into a taxi at 5.15. The station was an experience; I had been warned already to ignore everyone other than the people sitting at counters however we were approached by people several times trying to spin us all sorts of tales ranging from 'your tickets are only for Indian people not tourists' to 'the train jumped off the tracks and is not running'. I assume these were attempted scams but a man behind the counter soon sent us on our way with the knowledge that all was well.

The train journey was uneventful, we were in a very quiet part of the train and they brought us a huge breakfast halfway through the journey which was great! Apart from that I slept for a large part of the journey, catching a few glimpses here and there of green farmland, pigs, dogs, cows and even a few people strolling along the train tracks.

Four hours later we arrived in Jaipur and were met at the station by a crush of people calling to offer us various modes of transport to get us to the hotel. We ended up getting an official car driven by a man called Rahul, he was extremely knowledgeable and had great English and we ended up organising to go on a trip with him in the afternoon to a 'monkey temple'.

Jaipur was instantly much much calmer than Delhi, still by no means quiet but there was less of a sense of urgency everywhere. Our hotel was absolutely spectacular - down an unassuming side street it suddenly loomed out of nowhere, all gold studded doors and intricately patterned eaves. The inside was even more impressive, decorated with artwork and stylised statues and old photographs in frames - I love it! The floors are tiled and the ceilings and walls beautifully painted. There are several small courtyards with fountains and the whole place just feels like I'm in another world.

In the afternoon Rahul took us just outside of the city and dropped us at the bottom of one of the mountains that sits around the city. We climbed up a cobbled switchback road towards the temple of the sun at the top. On the way we passed multitudes of animals - the monkeys were obviously the main attraction, though I was careful to keep my distance it was lovely watching them scamper around playing with sacks and pieces of newspaper. There were also dogs and pigs (with hundreds of tiny piglets!) and cows and goats everywhere. The temple itself was a small building but the view was unbelievable; it looked out over the whole city, we could see the mountains curving around the mass of flat topped buildings and watching the sun rise over the city was amazing.

A family lived in the temple and the mother sat us down and put dots of red paint on our foreheads (for luck) then we gave her things from our homes (mine was a batman keyring!) and she gave me a carved keyring of Ganesh in return. It was a lovely ritual and afterwards she offered to do some henna for us, I jumped at the chance as I was hoping to get some henna done in India. We chatted to her and her daughter while she did the henna, it was so interesting learning about the way they lived and I really enjoyed chatting to such lovely people.

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Photos

The hotel
The view from the inner balcony, such a beautifully decorated building!

On the way to the sun temple.
This little guy seemed pretty harmless, seemed to enjoy posing too!