On our second day in Jaipur, we got up early, had breakfast at our hotel (Royal Orchid Jaipur, which we recommend) and set out to for more sight seeing. We did a little driving tour of town with the guide pointing out a few sights that we didn’t have time to visit the previous day but the major things we wanted to see that day were just outside the city.
I had read somewhere about an interesting place where you could see monkeys in the wild but up close. The place is the Temple of the Sun God. I mentioned it to Her Cuteness and she said she really wanted to see it. It is about 2.5 km/1.5 miles East of Jaipur in an area called Galta. There’s an actual Hidu temple there, as well as two pools (one for women and another for men) fed by a spring. The local people believe that those pools have special powers and that you could wash away your sins, if you bathe in them. There were quite a few people bathing in the pools, so who knows. Nonetheless, it was a really neat place to visit.
More interesting than the temple itself, however, were the gazillion monkeys that were roaming around the area. Unfortunately, Max had just fallen asleep in the car, so he and Paul stayed behind while Nia and I spent some quality time with the monkeys:
But the absolute best and cutest part was watching the babies with their mommies:
So, if you/your kids like monkeys, I highly recommend a visit to the Temple of the Sun God (a.k.a. Monkey Temple) just outside Jaipur. I have to say that monkeys in India can be aggressive and we were a little bit nervous but these seemed nicer than others we have seen. I still wouldn’t pet them though - that would be pushing my luck but we could watch them from a few feet away, which was enough to give both us and them a certain level of comfort.
How cool!
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