Monkey Attack At Galta!!

Before the 5 hour car ride to Jaipur, we quickly checked out 2 last sites in Agra. The Agra Fort made out of red sandstone for the Mughal Empire and located just outside of the City we visited Fatehpur Sikri which is a former imperial capital city of Mughal emperor Akbar. We got lost a couple times here and were pretty much sick of tourist sites at this point. Oh and the hawkers were super annoying. We tried a new tactic today which involves yelling “NO!” extremely loud when they keep bugging you to buy their crap. It freaks them out because they quit following us around after that. Yay!

The drive to Jaipur was long and hot. The sun was on my side, of course, so I had the worst case of swack and swass. Fun. Just outside Jaipur, we stopped in Galta which holds a bunch of 250 year old temples, a freshwater “sacred” spring, and over 5000 macaque monkeys so it’s known as “Monkey Palace”. The temples were cool but we sadly we were more amused by the monkeys. There were so many baby monkeys, sick looking monkeys and injured ones from the many monkey fights. We were almost caught in the middle of a war. Once two monkeys from different groups start fighting, both sides snap and they start growling and biting each other and a mini war erupts and craploads of monkeys start jumping in a start running into the hills. Kind of like a gang war. We were standing by the scared pool when they all ran toward and around us to get into the hills as we stood still and tried not the get rabies! Freaked us out pretty bad. There are many monkeys with war wounds (in the form of bites and scratches) to nurse. We thoroughly enjoyed this site and wanted to take a baby monkey home with us.

After checking into our hotel, which was a gorgeous heritage home, we decided to have our driver take us to Mirza Ismail Road (MI Road) so we could have a stroll on what is the main drag of the city. Definitely not fun - it was chaos. We had to avoid cars, motorbikes, rickshaws, creepy staring men and so many beggars, notably one lady carrying a crying baby and waving an empty milk bottle around. This stroll did not last long. We ate a late meal of chicken biriyani (mixed with rice) and fish kebabs before bed. I think the biriyani is the cause of my worst day ever the following day…