The Monkey Temple

We had heard about a temple called The Monkey Temple. When we got here to Jaipur, we made a priority to see it. The Monkey Temple's real name is Galat, a temple built for the Hindu Sun God, but since there are loads of monkeys there at dusk, it got the silly nickname of The Monkey Temple. We got a tuk-tuk out there and it was the most horrible ride we had ever had. We had an older driver, calm, gentle, a less crazy driver we thought, we guessed wrong. Zoom Zoom Zoom, he was the craziest driver we ever had!!! But back to the Monkey Temple. If you go, it is the most bizarre site in the world. Okay, first there are the animals. There are monkeys and cows which are everywhere. And then there is food. Animals + food = animal poop. And that's exactly what there is. Monkey poop pellets and cow pies are not the kind of thing you want to see at a holy site. Then, the women in their Saree's and Punjabi's and the men in typical western clothing. But they are all barefoot!!! Now remember those excretions I was telling you about? Bare feet + poop = a large mess. And they don't even try to not step in it!!! Now the garbage. There is garbage EVERYWHERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And the cows eat the garbage too!! Cows + Garbage = a germ breeding ground. I don't even want to know what those poor cows are picking up!!! And now, the site itself. The bare foot people that have walked in the poop and garbage in their pretty Saree's and Punjabi's now start to finish the unsanitary process by going to a large green-watered pool, also filled with monkey poop and garbage. The women go up to the pool, light a candle and set it afloat on a little raft with the candle aboard. Then you go up further and there is another pool, less garbage (but sill green) and the people were swimming in it!!! The ladies and men, fully dressed, would get into the pool, stand up and dunk their heads into the water!!! The younger girls would just dump buckets of the filthy stuff onto their heads. Green water + people in it = germs. And then you go up even further and there is another pool and that one has even less garbage in it but the monkeys drink out of that pool. It looks like a mosquito breeding ground to me.

So overall:

There are tons of pretty people but they walk through lots of garbage and poop of the monkeys and cows that hang around and the people feed the monkeys and the cows eat the garbage and the people take off their shoes and they swim in the pools that are "ever so clean" and then they set candles afloat, and this is all on a holy site of the Sun God in Hinduism? Do you now understand why the Monkey Temple is the most bizarre site you will ever see or hear about? If you don't, then you have to read this blog, again.

**If read quickly, the last paragraph can be quite amusing.**