Jaipur

The first full day we headed off to Jaipur this involved a long bus journey, with again many interesting sights on the road, what people will carry on motorbikes is amazing and they also seem to have a competition here where they see how many people they can fit on one vehicle.

As I have mentioned before there are cows everywhere, roadsides, at banks, in the railway station, in front of market stalls, on bridges , they sleep, wander, graze, and just stand. This has started many conversations about them and I have been told a couple of stories, the nice version and the real version. 

I was concerned about the cows just wandering especially on busy roads and asked our Rishikesh driver what the story was about them. He said that the cows belonged to people  and that they wandered freely during the day and would return to their homes in the morning and in the evening to be milked, as they were honouring their home but would then wander again. 

I have now asked our tour guide about them . He has a different version, that is that the  cows did belong to people but when they stop producing milk they are just abandoned on the street as they are too expensive to keep if they are not giving milk. Cows are sacred to Hindus as they are seen as a mother figure and should not be hurt so the families do not know what to do with them. He went onto say that  Hindus are mainly vegetarian but that also people would not eat the cows because of the garbage that they eat and that is basically what they do eat  rubbish, you often see then rooting around in the rubbish that is piled everywhere. You also see monkeys, dogs and goats scavenging around in the rubbish too. 

He went on to say that the cows are very clever and that they sleep in the road as they have learnt that the flies will not bother them there as they do not like the passing traffic but also that the cows get high on the fumes from the cars so are quite happy! That is why he says you see them slowly plodding along. Whatever he says it is not a happy life for them although they do seem to enjoy standing sideways on in the middle of the road, as if to say, "Bring it on."

When they die they are taking to the edge of the town where their skin is removed and they are left to be eaten by scavengers. We have seen black kites and vultures here circling around. 

In Jaipur we were in a hotel that used to be the house of a noble it was very grand, and old fashioned with lots of ornate paintwork. 

Our bedroom

David chilling at the hotel.

Our hotel door which we locked with a padlock. 

Jaipur is known as the pink city, it was painted pink to welcome the Prince of Wales, way back in the day, we were told the date but it has all blurred together

Inside the Amber Fort.

One of the gardens at Amber fort

The first evening we were in  Jaipur we went to the cinema to see a Bollywood film. Walking to the cinema was an eye opener, an assault on all the senses and has made me a vegetarian at least while I 

am in India. We had to walk through the local market place, which was incredible , in fact I am surprised I am even eating vegetables, there were flies everywhere, rubbish lying around, goats standing on a vegetable stall eating produce and at one point a rat ran out from a pasta/rice stall right past my feet. It actually went on two people's feet in our group. What upset me the most though was the chickens being kept in high rise cages, layers and layers of them. I didn't take any photos here as I was not pausing to take my camera out of my bag, I just wanted to get through it. 

What was nice was the amount of children running around playing with kites, that was nice to see, although some were running around roof tops! 

The actual cinema was lovely and it was fun to see the film. We didn't have a clue as to what was going on, but the place was packed and there was a lot of audience interaction with the film, cheering and booing etc. 

The second evening we went to the monkey temple, this is a place where there are lots of temples and also a lot of monkeys. On entering the place we were accosted by a very scary man who wanted money of people who had cameras on them as there is a charge to take photos. He was very aggressive so I pretended I didn't have a camera, it was hidden in my bag, and I thought I am not giving you money, so I decided I just wouldn't take photos. 

What surprises me the most is that the majority of temples are so run  down and dirty. Any way we headed up the hill past loads of temples and the further up we went we came across more and more monkeys, we had been warned that they might grab things from us but they did not bother us at all. In this area there are also two bathing areas, one for ladies and one for men, so there were a lot of people in washing, we walked past them and came to a pool of  stagnant water at which the monkeys were 

congregating, some were even diving in from the roof of a nearby building, which was fun to see.  Although again once more the rubbish lying around was horrible. I have asked about the amount of rubbish lying around but have been told there is no organised rubbish collection. We carried on even further up the hill, in the stifling heat and I thought I had left climbing behind me at Macchu Picchu, but what a view from the top, it was lovely. 

I did take this photo, this is David getting his first geocache in India at the Monkey Temple.