Monkey Temple

A visit to the monkey temple of Jaipur

When we were planning our outings for our last day in Jaipur our guide recommended that we go to the Monkey Temple, and I immediately imagined a temple to a monkey god. We had seen one off of the side of the road at one point, a huge monkey-headed god with crazy pink lips looming over a modest temple, and I assumed that was where he would be taking us.  I was very pleasantly surprised when we ended up about 10 miles outside of town at a temple in the hills which was named for the monkeys who have made it their home rather than for a god.

Galtaji has been a Hindu retreat since the 16th century, but the temple structures were built in the 18th century.  The compound is made up of two temples and a few bathing pools.  The complex was built around a natural spring, and waterfalls create two main pools that are used by pilgrims for bathing.  Once you see the pictures of the pools this might not seem quite as good an idea as it sounds.

There were also quite a few cows at the temple, clearly at home walking up and down the steep stone steps.

 
Our guide convinced some of us that it was perfectly safe to feed the monkeys. I am still not quite sure why we thought this was a good idea, but the boys did seem to enjoy it!

 

One of the bathing pools. The upper pool was filled with people, but I am not sure why they weren't down here.  It wasn't that the upper pool was any cleaner if that is what you are thinking. We did see quite a few monkeys drinking from this pool, but for whatever reason they weren't bathing here either.

 

The cows soon showed up because they knew the monkeys would be dropping their banana peels. Apparently cows love banana peals! 

 

Greg truly enjoyed his time feeding the monkeys.

Is this a good idea?  See that wet guy there? He was just bathing in this...

 

So yeah, I wasn't too interested in having one of them crawl on me!