Monkey Stole My Scarf!

Sat 24th Nov - Jaipur day 2

Today was a pretty packed morning. We arranged for tuk tuks for the whole group for the morning and we went first to the Red Fort, which is one of the palaces used by the royal family back in the day. Along the way we stopped to take pictures of it and along came a little elephant, just walking along the street, so obviously we had to take some photos with it! Mine looks like he’s smiling and while having it taken the elephant decided he liked my skirt and was literally sucking it off me!

For the fort we had to walk up a long way and it was already baking hot, you can take elephants up but it’s not advised as they don’t treat them well. We paid for entrance and at first were all together but due to how large it was and how many different courtyards there were we all lost each other. Me and Julie stuck together and went everywhere, getting hugely lost in the process. 2 hours later we came back down, had to have photo’s with an entire family (we swear the mother was trying to marry her son off to me!) and everyone else was waiting for us – woops!

We then stopped off for some quick photo’s at the royal palace on the lake and went to the Monkey Temple – which wasn’t actually the monkey temple, it was the sun temple. But we couldn’t actually be bothered to try walking down the hill and back up to see if the temple down the way was the monkey temple, as we’d just walked up a really steep hill! There were loads of Monkey’s on the walk up though so that satisfied us. On the way I’d lost my red scarf to the pavement, on the way back down we saw that a monkey had decided it was his, and had stolen it to wrap around himself! Julie B managed to get it back for me though – straight in the wash that goes!

We were then exhausted so decided to go back to the hotel for lunch, then literally just chilled for the rest of the day – I know I know, I’m supposed to be travelling and experiencing India, but it was just so nice to sit with the guys and some of the others, catching up on the blog, sorting through pictures and facebooking – sometimes you need a break from all the sightseeing! In the evening we did manage to see loads of wedding processions – the guy rides to the girls house on a white horse, with all his family in tow, to make things official, then rides back on an elephant with music, fireworks, crazy family dancing around – it’s definitely a sight to see! We asked Yash about it and he said there were so many because in the calendar it’s supposed to be the best day to get married on – for good luck or something.

Yash then took us for dinner at a place that didn’t serve alcohol – much to Paul’s disappointment! We think he’d cottoned on to our weakness, plus he wasn’t pleased with us drinking in a holy city back in Pushkar. But he did eventually take me, Laura, Paul, Josie and Ali to a hotel bar with some of his friends, where we had a couple cocktails. But we were so tired we all headed back pretty early (11pm) as we had another day of travel ahead of us tomorrow.