the Majestic Taj, Peach Jaipur, and the Monkeys Attack

On day 3 of our Indian Adventure, April 15, Sara and I “woke up” at 5:45am. I say, “woke up”, because, while our hotel had a magnificent view of the Taj Mahal, our $5/per night room lacked air-conditioned. The room was sweltering to say the least, the exact antithesis of an icebox. In effect, there was no sleeping involved that night, none whatsoever. So, back to the topic at hand, we got out of bed at 5:45am, just in time to see the sunrise over the grand Taj Mahal.

After a 7-minute walk through the streets of Taj Ganj, we hit the entrance to the Taj Mahal. At first you walk through a courtyard, the surrounding buildings are all red with Arabic writing, influence from the Muslim Shah Jahan who built the monument in remembrance of his late wife. After walking through the courtyard you enter the beginning of the Taj. My first words were: “Sara I feel like we’re in Disney World”. That is exactly what it looks like, its perfection makes it look like a relic, completely fake. You are careful entering because you don’t want to make the area dirty, you are shocked that after seeing such poverty, pollution, and littering there could exist something as pure, white, and clean within the same 500 meters.

Sara and I took tons of pictures with the Taj in the background, at first there is an infinity pond that leads up to the structure all aligned with topiary trees, and flowers. The infinity pond then stops where there is an elevated square bath, empty now and filled with white marble, after the bath the infinity pond continues up until the steps of the Taj Mahal. The closer we got to it the more real it felt.

When we got right up to the stair we saw that the entire edifice was white marble with Arabic carvings, and floral designs made of precious stones. The Arabic carvings were made of gold, while the flowers were made of rubies, garnets, and jade stones. It was truly majestic, right out of Disney’s Aladdin. My descriptions aren’t doing the Taj justice in the least, in order to understand its splendor you have to see it in person. In the true essence of a word that is entirely overused it was AWSOME.

We stayed at the Taj for about an hour, once the sun came up the building just radiated. Once we left we were back to reality, back on those poisoned streets of Agra. It was around 7:30am and we got to see all the kids in their uniforms running off to school, shop keepers opening up shop for the day, starting to hassle the average tourist to pop in and take a look at their merchandise. We walked a good 10 minutes out of our way, because we got lost coming back, 10 extra minutes of hassling, cows, poop, and kids running off to homeroom, or however they start their day. Upon returning to our sweat pit of a room we packed up our backpacks and met the car for our 5.5-hour drive to our next location. Finally, Sara and I were on our way to Rajasthan first stop JAIPUR!

The car ride went pretty smoothly, we stopped off for lunch at a café along the way, had some more Indian food, some more cook vegetables and steamed rice, mmm. At around 3:45 pm we made it to Jaipur, I was so bitter all day from losing a nights sleep that I made sure we were going to have AC that night. We checked into a fairly nice hotel, Jaipur Inn, we were both pleased with the condition of the place, I mean it was no Ritz, but then again we were in INDIA! Jaipur is called the "Pink City", because in the 1980's the whole city was painted Pepto Bismal pink to welcome the Prince of Wales, unfortunatly, but not surprising the place hasnt been touched since so that pink has faded into peach. EVERYTHING was peach, EVERYTHING!

Since it was only 3:45, we were wondering what we should do then, too late to go shopping (Jaipur is notorious for its great shopping, and even better bargaining), too late to start seeing the sights, so instead Sara had a great idea, why not take a 45 minute drive to Galta (Monkey Temple) & Surya Mandir. What is Galta (Monkey Temple) & Surya Mandir you ask? Well the book, Lonely Planet, aka our Bible for the 14 days we were they, really hyped this place up, they made it seem really cool. After venturing into this unknown territory, it came to my attention that we should have given more notice to the first three adjective used to describe this monkey, let me rephrase, animal temple: “desolate, and barren, if evocative, place.” um, desolate and barren is right on! There was nothing there! NOTHING! Sara and I bought peanuts since the book also mentioned how at sunset hundreds of monkeys congregate on the temple for feeding. That’s right HUNDREDS OF MONKEYS, for some reason we thought that sounded cool, after the experience it is down right scary! After buying peanuts we started walking up toward the temple. This place was more like the Jaipur Zoo than a historical site. Within the first 5 minutes we saw dogs, goats, cows, bulls, monkey, sheep. Ha-ha it was UNREAL! But then the sun started to slowly sink, and those hundreds of monkeys started popping up. Vicious little things, they are downright mean. We had to hide our peanuts so they wouldn’t attack us. Yes, those rabies infested sneaky thieves attack! Don’t think monkeys are cute because let me tell you from personal experience there is nothing cute about them! They are disgusting! They make rats look good. While hiding our peanuts, and our valuables (because they are professionals when it comes to pick pocketing more so than humans), tons of Indian kids were following us clearly asking for a rupee or two, and in their midst of their begging a monkey attacked on! Full on jumped on his back and took him down, the kid nonchalantly shook him off and than threw a rock at him, the whole thing lasted about 5 seconds and was done with such normality. At that moment Sara and I dropped our peanuts on the floor and ran, RAN toward the car, toward doors, windows, security, and our closest form of salvation.

After that we called it a day, apparently the monkeys took a lot out of me because I passed out that night at 8:30.