Jaipur? I Barely Even Know Hur.

Today, we drove from Agra to Jaipur.  Along the way, we stopped at Fatehpur Sikri, a 'ghost town' outside of Agra, but only in the sense that it is a really old town, like the Agra Fort we saw yesterday, but just not still being used as a barracks.  No actual ghosts.

We walked around the abandoned red-stone city, spending most of our time fending off tour guides.  Seriously, because there are so few tourists, every amateur tour guide at the place tried to lead us around.  One of them even started giving a tour, claiming he worked there, but providing lots of wrong information directly in contradiction to several carved stone plaques that we were standing in front of, until I shouted, 'thanks for the information, but we'd like to look at this in silence!'  Unfortunately, we were in an echo chamber, and I was overheard by several dozen British tourists who must have thought I was just about the worst person they had ever met.  Luckily, that's how the Indians seem to feel about British tourists in India.  Wasn't the occupation enough?

On the way from the ghost town to Jaipur, we saw four monkeys, about one hundred camels pulling carts, and one-half a puppy.  The monkeys were awesome, as usual.  The camels were so plentiful that there were even camel-only rest stops, where you'd see several camels just sitting there.  Like when you had to rest your oxen in oregon trail.  The half-puppy was decidedly less cute than a puppy that hadn't been ripped in half, and also decidedly less cute than a live puppy.  Oh, and we also saw a giant statue of the Hindu monkey god.  Brilliant.

After making it to Jaipur, we checked into the hotel, which is really quite spectacular, as it was previously the palace of the former prime minister.  I also really approved of their choice of fabrics, which prompted us to go fabric shopping again, this time in Jaipur's old city.  There, I got lots of amazing stuff (as I had to cancel the order I had placed in Mumbai, as they couldn't get what I ordered), and it was worth it because shopping here at the fabric factory stores was way better than what was in Mumbai.

When we returned to the hotel, we ate dinner outside, watched some traditional Indian dance, browsed the outdoor shopping market, and played life-sized chess on the outdoor chess board.  You know, typical Wednesday night stuff.

After all this, we returned to the hotel room, and just when I thought I wouldn't see any more monkeys today, we flipped on Nat Geo, which was showing 'Monkey Thieves', a reality tv documentary show ABOUT THE MONKEY GANGS OF JAIPUR.  OK, I know you're probably all tired of my obsession with monkeys, but everyone go TiVo this show right now.  To give you a taste, I just watched a gang of monkeys break into an accountant's office to throw tax returns out the window into the street.  Try telling THAT to a client.  And all this was shot a few blocks from where we're currently staying, right where we were fabric shopping.  I hope to meet the lead monkey, Zamir, when were touring around tomorrow.

Monkey sightings: approximately 20 real, 1 fake, 1 Zack Efron.

P.S. Everyone in India is super into Obama, and lots of people have been asking about him.  Much like the tour guides, I have just been making stuff up about him and his xray vision.