Yet another monkey temple

The highlight of our three days in Jaipur, in the desert state of Rajasthan, was Galta temple, known in the guidebooks as the “monkey temple.” And no wonder: there are monkeys everywhere, sitting on parked motorcycles, climbing the rocky mountain walls that surround the temple, and drinking from the various pools of water. Even before walking up to the temple complex, there are macaques, hanging out in the same space as pigs, dogs, and goats. All seem to be used to begging visitors for food. One particularly pushy goat got in the way when I was trying to photograph a monkey drinking from the water pump.

The path winds up the hill, then down before reaching the temple itself. After weeks of making the steep climb up Jakhu hill in Shimla, it was a pleasant stroll.

Within the complex are bathing tanks, which are said to be several stories deep and filled with water that has been diverted from the Ganges. We watched a monkey pounce on a woman’s sandal, which had been removed when she went to visit the pool. He chewed on it for a minute before tossing it back down. Later, we found the sandal badly chewed and abandoned – I guess the monkey had decided it was worth doing a thorough examination before giving up on it as food.

While Danny talked to one of the pandits at one of the Hanuman mandirs, I watched people bring bags of bananas and peanuts to feed the macaques, langurs, and cows that hung out at the entry gate on the opposite side of the temple complex. I apparently was standing too close to a juvenile monkey, who happened to be screaming about something on top of the gate, because a large male hurried over to me and grabbed my leg, barking a warning!

On our way back, we stopped every so often so Danny could offer peanuts to the resident cows and macaques. I had my second close encounter of the monkey kind when a baby monkey scurried up my pant leg and hopped onto my purse. He looked at me for a moment, probably wondering why food wasn’t being proffered or maybe what was supposed to happen when you leapt up on a human, then hopped back off.

By the time we reached the bottom, we’d been at the temple for nearly three hours, which was confounding to the auto rickshaw driver who had been waiting for us. (We quite often defy the tourist stereotype, taking much longer than the locals think we’ll take when we visit sites or museums. This is partly because Danny is sometimes doing research and needs to talk to lots of people and partly because we like to take our time and look at everything.) It was also too dark for photographs at that point, which was too bad. As we were leaving, I saw a baby monkey hop onto a pig’s back, sit there for a second, and then use the pig as a stepstool to get him onto a bike. A monkey riding a pig would have been an awesome photo to have.