As we are covering so many places so quickly it makes sense to do a full day tour seeing all the major sights to get the most for our time. After breakfast at the hostel we managed to find a tuk tuk driver who would take us around for 500 for the day, and so off we went. We started our trip at the Amber fort, which was really beautiful. We managed to get foreign student entry which was only 100 rupees each, and the fort was absolutely huge! We spent an hour or so wandering around the various rooms, my favourite of which had mirror-like tiles on it.
After this we headed to an elephant house. The driver had just said he'd take us to see elephants but we arrived to see lots chained up so opted to miss this stop as the only attraction seemed to be riding them. We then went on to the jal mahal, which is a beautiful temple in the river. For some reason they have recently restricted entry to it so we could only see it from a distance which was a shame, but there were a lot of stands selling jewellery and souvenirs which we stopped to look at for a while.
After this we went to get lunch. We went to an actual restaurant which made a change; we usually just eat at little local ones but this had air con and everything, and was still very cheap. After lunch we went on to visit various handicraft places. These are essentially shops selling the same stuff as markets at higher prices and claiming that theirs is all organic/better quality etc. It's nice to see the stuff but I never quite trust them. The guy in the fabric shop took a liking to katie too so I think we were all glad to leave!
After this we were taken to our final stop, a monkey temple quite far out of the city. Meg and I bought some bananas and we climbed up a lot of stairs to the temple. After giving a monkey her first banana it came for the whole bag and she panicked and threw it to it. Very funny to watch but I'm sure I'd have done the same. We saw what we thought was a cow in labour too, though were very concerned to learn later that it was just a deformed cow being branded as 6 legged to make the owners money. Very odd.
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The temple itself was pretty underwhelming but we discovered that down the other side were a load of pools which people bathe in, and we ventured down. We'd been seeing men dressed in orange appearing to be part of a festival all day and they were here too, bathing in the holy water and holding sticks. It was really interesting to see and I wish we could have learnt what they were doing! There were a few smaller temples down here which we went in, and I also took the opportunity to feed monkeys my bananas which was slightly terrifying.
As this was our final stop we headed back to the hostel. We got dinner, showered and did a quick ab workout and then, yet again got an early night.
Laura x
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