Pink city monkeys 1/9
Up at 6 w the first 10 min call to prayer (Jaipur is a Muslim and Hindu city). Today I feel like $1MM, well, at least $658k. We hit up breakfast of toast and eggs, seems pretty safe. We discussed how Sanjay scammed us w the safari tickets. Too bad Lonely Planet and the www show 1k pp, not the 2.6k he says we owe him. Well Andy and Sanjay had a big "discussion" in the parking lot, let's just say I hope we get to leave w our bags. By discussion I mean 25 Indian dudes standing around waiting for the throwdown. Then he tries to act like we can only go to certain towns. I don't think so son. You are quite the liar Sanjay.
We inquired about the collective tickets price. Lonely Planet says 400 yet I see you've overwritten it w 1k. We call BS (see how we trust no one now?). OK we'll trust you whatever. We first hit up the City Palace in Jaipur (all walls are a shade of pink) where we saw beautifully painted and carved doorways (everything out of stone), the armory w the large collection of guns knives and nut cutters (yes balls). Across the way was an impressive observatory built in the 1900s which had sundials, astrological dials, distance of the sun and stars, altitude of the sun, length of day, etc. we climbed a minaret to view the pink city from above. We had to visit one of the Lassiwalas for some delicious lassi's in a clay cup. They were damn good.
Next we went to the Amber Palace. It has a lake in the front where people fish and still has the old walls around the grounds. We saw an outside room decorated w mirrors, and a guy took us around (without us asking) and showed us the sex room, views of the grounds, huge bee hives, the water well (which parents were letting their kids climb precariously on), and the rooms for the kings multiple wives.
A quick stop for a picture of the water temple and ice cream to complete our meals for the day, we went to the monkey palace. This temple has hundreds of monkeys so we prepped ourselves before going in- no shiny objects, no showing of teeth. These monkeys ended up being chill because they are so well fed. They even showed us how babies are made. We had the option of dipping in the holy water (full of garbage and monkey shit) but we declined and watched people bathe. The temple is in a valley and the monkeys are all around, climbing and protecting their territory around the rocks.
Driving around you see kites all over the sky, and many kites that will never be retrieved again. Now on to our next stop Pushkar. I can feel the tension w Sanjay driving as he tries to hit people and motorcycles- should be an interesting rest of the trip. Night driving is a little scary. Not only do huge trucks pull right out in front of you, you have to dodge cows in the median and the road on the freeway. So far Sanjay is on top of his game.
We reached the hotel at 8 and decided to finally go out for food. We aimed for pizza and I immediately got hungry. Yes I can do pizza. I'll have my own thanks. The city we are in, Pushkar, is very conservative- no meat, little alcohol, no PDA, cover body. The restaurant has a pizza called pepperoni. Andy asks if there's pepperoni on it. Nope. Do you have kebabs? That's meat babe. He's having a hard time grasping veg.