The Monkey Temple and the Pink City
Trip Start
May 11, 2005
1
246
320
Trip End
Ongoing
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Jaipur, Rajasthan, India
Friday, May 1, 2009
Jaipur is known as the pink city. We were reluctant to go but in the end we decided to check it out on the way to Jaisalmer plus the Wikings were there and that alone was a good reason to stop. All in all the Pink city sucked..... except for the most amazing thing I have yet to see in my life..... the Monkey Temple!!!! Both Ben and I have a special disposition towards monkeys.... honestly they are awesome. Eventually Ben will have one as a pet but at the monkey temple the monkeys were amazing . The temple is built moving up a hillside, cresting out with sweeping views of Jaipur. It is somewhat roman in style with stair stepped pools and wide courts and balconies. The monkeys on the first few levels were pretty standard, all cute and human looking begging for fruit and threatening to attack.
The monkeys at the top of the temple were pretty cool too, looking out over the town or threatening to attack but the monkeys in the middle...man you have no idea..... about 50 feet up, there was a huge swimming pool just like a roman bath except it was typically Indian filthy and some locals were teaching one guy how to swim they had even conveniently tied a rope around his waist to drag him up off the bottom when needed.... but 30 feet up above this, in a tiny pool about 10ft x 10ft, eight steps down...the monkeys were swimming!!!!!!!!
There is absolutely no way I can make this sound cool, so I will leave it in the immortal words of the overly qualified San Diego anchorman Ron Burgundy..... "Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention. I've just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story. I need all of you, to stop what you're doing and listen. Cannonball!"
If you have never seen a monkey take a RUNNING LEAP THRU THE AIR DOWN AN ENTIRE FLIGHT OF STAIRS INTO A POOL JUST TO DUNK HIS BUDDY.....well you are winning at the My Life Sucks game
Never have monkeys looked so human as they did here.. swimming and frolicking, it was like watching a pool filled with children playing Diving down and getting things off the bottom, wrestling, holding each other underwater until the loser tapped out ...some were only dog paddling.... but others were actually swimming... breast stroke and frogkick and everything..... I could go on for hours..but you will probably not really understand how amazing it was.....MONKEYS SWIMMING!!!!!
