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I am being kicked out of India. All signs point to exit here, on my last day. The animals don't like me and Mother Nature herself has decided to give me rain as a parting gift..

August 20th: Kicked out of India

Esilbert
2006-01-19 13:42:22

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I am being kicked out of India. All signs point to exit here, on my last day. The animals don't like me and Mother Nature herself has decided to give me rain as a parting gift...

Monsoon rains poured down as I walked the old city of Jaipur. Minding my own business, suddenly a cow butted me with one of its horns. People laughed, cars honked, pigeons flew everywhere but for some reason this cow did not like me. Rubbing my sore leg and suddenly discovering an immense fear of cows, I continued on through Jaipur with Alex and Mathieu, two great French guys I met in Delhi. As we walked, we were repeatedly invited to participate in gem scams, help Indian men practice their French 'in their shop' and incessantly offered grotesquely painted maharajah marionettes.

We saw the intricately decorated Hawa Mahal where the wives of nobles would sit five storeys high above Jaipur and watch the world go by. We ascended the building and found the windows of the façade to be extremely low and small. Delicate Indian women?

We repeatedly tried to find the entrance to the Jantar Mantar, an incredible astronomical observatory but found that Lonely Planet had mis-numbered the monuments on their map. (LP readers take note!) As we tried to locate the observatory we accidentally stumbled onto a Hindu temple, the Kalki Temple, where there is a large marble horse famous for some reason. Apparently tourists come to just see the horse and the son of the Brahmin priest was dismayed about this. So we got a complete tour of the temple and were given orange floral garlands to wear and saffron coloured chalky stuff (I've never actually asked what it is...) for the third eye region of our foreheads. We were given a short explanation of the Hindu gods (wait, is that possible?) and led to see other parts of the temple.

The reason I have no idea why the horse was famous is because before we entered ...