India: The Next Chapter

Hi everybody! This has been a long time in the works but I am happy to say it is finally a realization to get this thing published.  Originally I planned for the last 12 days of my India excursion to be one big final chapter.  However, In these 12 days more amazing things have occurred than I could begin to describe in an amount of words that you would want to read or I would want to write all in one sitting.  So I have a plan.  I will take a note from The Hobbit and split a book in three.  Three entries posted over 3 days one chapter per day, each summing up a bit more of the amazingness that is India.  

Considering this is the beginning of the third post on India,  here is a quick update of this adventure so far.  From the beginning in a quick paragraph.  Flew into Chennai down south, hopped some trains further south to Madurai, Moved north to Bangalore where I met a good friend from earlier school days, Varun, Took a flight from Bangalore to the desert cities of Rajasthan, Spent a few days exploring ancient desert forts, deserts, camel rides, and other cool desert stuff with Varun.  Spotted tigers in Ranthambore tiger reserve, and finally came to Jaipur where Varun left back for Bangalore and I stayed to plot a rough idea of what to do in the next couple weeks.  Busy couple weeks it had been! However I still had over a week to go and to many options for what to do next! ... 

If you wanna check out the previous blogs: here is a link to each one:

> http://whatsupw0rld.blogspot.com/2015/05/india-where-am-i.html

> http://whatsupw0rld.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-eventual-part-2.html

And finally on with the adventure...

Part 1: Sandstorms, Monkeys, and Elephants!

The setting is Jaipur, a small desert city in the west of India.  The weather has been nearly 100F everyday (40C).  The streets are hot and dusty and the people wear clothes that cover them from the desert heat. 

Varun just left and I was still feeling a bit under the weather from some bad food poisoning I had picked up earlier in the week. So I got a nice hotel and decided I would wait until I felt better before trekking on.  I had been moving almost every night for the past couple weeks by sleeping on night trains and occasional cheap hotel beds, so this really felt like a grand resort I was staying in.  It was only 800 per night ($8 US) but came with air conditioning, a rooftop restaurant and even wifi that actually worked some of the time!  I guess my exhaustion caught up to me, or I got too comfortable or something.  Somehow... I laid down in the hotel bed, and 3 or 4 days just slipped away...

Despite the comfort of my desert palace, I did get out and about some.  I explored the part of the city around me by foot mostly in search of necessities of life such as a laundry service and a fruit stand.  My clothes had not been washed in two weeks, but considering India I think my smell kinda blended in...

My second night in Jaipur I did have a good excuse to stay in however.   I tried to take a walk around the block yet halfway through I noticed it was oddly windy and dusty out.  Within an hour this had turned into a full blown sand storm and I could hardly see across the road!  I heard from the hotel staff that it actually killed 7 people back in Jaiselmer but luckily we were on the edge of the desert so didn’t get the brunt of it. 

View from my room as the sandstorm swept in.

The next day the main attractions were on my schedule no matter how I was feeling.  I booked with a rickshaw driver to take me around the highlights and made a day of exploring as much as I could.  We started off headed to the ancient desert fort that guards over the great city of Jaipur.  Now I know it seems like I visited a fort in every desert city I visited, but that’s only because every city I visited had a fort...  Apparently many years of ancient battles have been fought among the desert kingdoms of India. Fortunately, it’s a purdy peaceful place now days, and they make for pretty cool attractions!

Even after spending the last few days exploring other desert forts this still was a pretty remarkable place.  It sat atop a cliff overlooking a lake on one side and the Jaipur on the other.  The walk up was along a rough crumbling road that zigzagged through ruined bits of the castle. The sun was turned up to full blast as I climbed the steep crooked path to the front gate.   It was so hot, that even the random goats I passed were hiding from the sun in a small doorway!  I finally reached the front gates, covered in sweat and eager to get inside the gates.  Out of all the grand rooms of this lofty palace, my favorite would have to be the bathroom.  It had a hot tub sized stone bath and sat in a small veranda soaking in the sunlight through windows that peered straight out over the cliff to the sunny lake below.  I can just imagine relaxing there in the sun with a good book and that view....truly the life of a king! 

So that’s about all I really have to say about the fort really.  I mean it seemed similar to the other forts with its grand colorful stained glass rooms, gold trimmed thrones, and large gardens.  Equally as grandiose and stunningly powerful just as any proper palace fort should be.

After the fort I was headed for an experience that has been on my list since I was a kid watching the Jungle Book.  Finally riding an elephant!  We drove into town to the local elephant handler (yes, local elephant handler is a real job!) who allowed me to take one out for an hour around the town!  He put a basket up top to sit in which I stayed in until I got tired of ducking the dangling power lines in the narrow alleys we were walking, and hopped down to sit bareback instead.   I had never even seen an elephant up close before this day and here I was petting the head of one as we walked through a city that didnt cause people to even bat an eye.  Well I take that back, I did draw attention while riding an elephant through town...but only because I was a foreigner riding an elephant through town.  This must be a rare site indeed.

However my wild animal adventures did not end there.  After the elephants we were headed to a slightly more sacred of places, to visit some much smaller occupants.  The isolated monkey temple of Jaipur!  This is an ancient Hindu temple set in the red stone mountains surrounding the city that is of course heavily inhabited by...monkeys.  

To get there we rode for an hour in the rickshaw, buzzing through tangled alleyways and cow filled streets until we actually left town and eventually pulled into a small village at the foot of a tall mountain.  There were a few monkeys running around the village but I was a fool to think we had arrived.  

The rickshaw driver turns to me, and in rough English says..."You walk from here, I stay"...  He points to the top of the daunting mountain in front of us to a small building sitting atop.  I sigh, step out of the rickshaw into the 100 degree weather (40 C), and began the climb.

  After a 5 minute climb I was about a fifth of the way up and ran into a friendly old Indian man that had stopped for a rest on his way to the temple.  He continued walking with me and talked the entire way of how the youth of the country have changed and don't respect customs anymore...Ironically the kind of conversations you hear from concerned elderly anywhere else in the world…maybe we are not all so different after all....but then he tried to get me to stop by the brothel he runs around the corner so I took a break and told him to walk on without me....Finally I reached the top of the mountain and looked out at the view.  I could see the city of Jaipur on the horizon and nothing but mountains and sand everywhere around.   I turned and looked at the building that I thought I was walking to and suddenly realized, this was not the temple I was looking for at all!!!  The temple apparently is hidden away in the valley behind this mountain!!...I just had to climb over the mountain to get to it...  At least I was halfway there and it was downhill from here.

I slacked down the back side of the mountain on a road that looked more heavily trafficked by horses and camels than by cars, eventually into a small green valley, an oasis of contrast to the dry rock mountains around it.  And there, I saw the true temple.  Like a gem tucked away and isolated from the outside world, this place sat as a paradise to our primate cousins.  There were large fountains and man made lakes and waterfalls, tall colorful buildings with intricate carvings of strange looking beasts, and tall trees with plenty of branches to swing, and of course, everywhere you looked there were monkeys.  Again I am reminded of the jungle temples in The Jungle Book.  

The monkeys were swimming in the green water of the fountains, climbing the rock cliff sides as I walked by, hanging in the trees, sitting in the windows of the temple and running across the path as I walked.  I even saw a couple that were picking on a local dog! This was definitely the monkey's territory.

I had bought some monkey food (a bag of peanuts) on the way up the mountain and when I got it out a radar must have gone off in the heads of all the surrounding monkeys.  I had 7 or 8 of them running around my legs and clinging to my pants within seconds!  It was ok at first but those little guys are mean!!  I ran out of peanuts and one started trying to eat my backpack!  At that point I decided I had seen enough and it was time to hop over the mountain again.

Well again it was more like a crawl up and over the mountain.  By the time I made it back to the rickshaw the water I had bought at the temple 20 minutes earlier was already boiling hot and I was suffering from heat exhaustion so bad that I yacked out the side of the rickshaw the second we started to move...Woops,... I decided I had done enough exploration for the day and asked the driver to take me back to the hotel.  

My backpack had been stationary for too long... it was time to get a move on.  I had spent enough time running around the desert and had so much more still left to see.  So the next day I packed up my bag and left for the train station.  And Just like that I was headed out of the desert heat and into the heartlands of India.  And just like that I will leave it To Be Continued...! 

  

You can look for the next chapter tomorrow night and enjoy the Taj Mahal, my first Indian bus ride, and a taste of the capital city, Delhi!

Thanks for reading and feel free to leave some feedback in the comments!  Any feedback is good and I love to hear from readers, so don't hesitate!