Jaipur: Morning Monkey Temple Guided Tour with Local Market

Go at dawn or do not go

Galta Ji at seven in the morning and Galta Ji at noon are different places. Early, the light is coming over the ridge into the gorge, pilgrims are bathing in the tanks, the macaques are calm, and there is almost no one else. By midday it is hot, crowded and the monkeys are bolder.

This tour is built around the early hour, with pickup before sunrise.

Galta Ji

A temple complex wedged into a gorge in the Aravalli hills, ten kilometres east of the old city. Natural springs run down through a series of stone kunds — the Galta Kund at the top has never been known to dry up — and pilgrims have bathed here for centuries.

The buildings are 18th-century pink sandstone, with painted interiors that are fading in a way that makes seeing them now feel worth doing. Above the complex, the Surya Temple on the ridge faces the sunrise and gives you the whole city laid out below.

About the monkeys

There are two troops — rhesus macaques and langurs — and they live here, which is why the place is nicknamed the Monkey Temple.

They are wild. Do not hold food in your hand, do not hold your phone out over a wall, and take your sunglasses off your head. Nobody has ever been hurt by following that advice; a lot of people have lost snacks by ignoring it.

The market walk

Afterwards, a walk through a working local market as it opens — vegetable carts, flower sellers stringing marigold for the morning's offerings, chai and kachori for breakfast standing up.

Options

Five of them: guide only, tuk-tuk with an English-speaking driver, private car with driver, or either vehicle with a guide as well. The tuk-tuk is the pleasant choice in winter; the car is the sensible one from April.

Around four hours. Entrance is a small fee paid at the gate.