angry monkeys and long train rides
Monday, November 13th, 2006Surely thats not my train…..there were more people packed inside the 15 or so carriges that are in my entire country. Literally people hangin out the windows, sitting on luggae racks and over flowing out of the bathrooms. I’m sure I booked a sleeper….but here it is pulling up at my platform already an hour late, its 1am and Im about to get on for a 13 hour ride. As I’m standing there looking horrified at the thought of squezing onto this train another tourist comes past and tells me no our train is coming now on the other side. Thank-you , Thank-you, Thank-you…..So I get a nice sleeper in a nice carrigae with only people in their beds.
The train station at Jaipur (and probably all of India)is pretty nuts any way, hardley any floor space due to what seems like half the city sleeping on the floor. Its all pretty shocking steping over 10 year old kids to get to your train.
But anyway back to my last day in Jaipur. Headed over to the monkey temple which my guidebook recommends as a cool sounding place full of monkeys. So my rickshaw driver drops me off, buy some peanuts for the monkeys and set off walking over this big hill into the middle of nowhere…getting a wee bit concerned walking past all these monkeys that are eyeing me up so I walk close behing some Indian guys who laugh at me for being scared. I keep walking up over the hill, not seeing hardly anyone else and definitley no other tourists when suddenly I see the opening to theis amazing Hindu temple set in the mountains like some sort of lost city. Its really incredible. On the way down I work out that theres another entrance with no hill climb where the other couple of tourists there got through. So I get shown around by this 15 year old kid that possibly is some sort of Monk and tells me lots of things that I don’t really understand. But no matter as its beautiful, a strange man reading a important looking book gives me a bindi (a red dot on my forehead) and I get a necklace of flowers from another holy looking man. Theres also the pools for bathing in, not that you would want to though with the crazy things including snakes that are floating around, but still theres a whole lot of kids playing in the water. Then while Im trying to feed the monkeys my peanuts without them swarming me this big angry one comes up and jumps on me stealing my flower neacklace to eat it! damn monkeys. I totally freaked out making more Indians laugh at me, and ended up leaving the rest of the peanuts on the ground. So after the climb back out of this very quiet and peaceful place, it was straight back into the noise of the city and a trip up to the Amber fort
The fort is one of many but I only saw the one which was enough. Up on a big hill, very fortress like, very impressive but old and run down. Nice views and watched an elephant bath in the big lake there which was nice. After arguing for about an hour and refusing to get in most rickshaws as they were ripping me off I got a ride back to the guest house to wait for my stupidly late train at midnight. Hung out and read my book on the grass, had some dinner. Talked to a nice man from the jewellery shop who was going to NZ to teach meditation (he aslo thinks I have a good aura). After dinner I suddenly realised that by being clever and hinding an important folder under my mattress in my room I had left it there. Now checked out and the room was occupied with the people nowhere around I ended up waiting and waiting until the last minute before I had to catch my train they turned up and I could get into the room (because theres only one set of keys…) so luckily it was there with my money, travellers cheques and flight info. Not sure what I wouldve done if I coudln’t have got it! Train ended up being late like I said earlier but was an OK journey, slept lots and some nice girls from Holland and Italy below me who shared their food with me and we drunk chai and waited out the long long stops at every station. So arrived in Jaisalmer ready to find a camel safari for a couple of days
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