When our personal auto rickshaw driver dropped us off at the Monkey Temple,we were greeted by two adorable boys, who took it upon themselves to be our personal guides for the walk up the pathway to the temple which was literally crawling with monkeys. The younger boy, Eliud?, immediately reached out and shook my hand and introduced himself. I attempted to avoid the uncomfortable awkwardness of negotiating a fee by telling them that we really didn't need a guide, but his friend soon warned us that they would need to be there to protect us from the aggressive monkeys. By then they had won my heart and we began our trek up the hill.
As we strolled, Eliud danced around us asking all kinds of questions like. Are you married? What do you do for work? Do you have children? How many? His dirty jeans and broken sandals flapped around his feet. He had a big speech impediment that he had absolutely no self consciousness about. They were both incredibly sweet and incredibly excited to escort us. Ram, the older boy told me about school and how he wanted to be a business man when he grew up. It seems that is the dream of many young Indian men. Ram was well on his way to this career.
At one point I was reaching to feed one of the monkeys a peanut and Ram jumped in and said, "not him, he is an aggressive one". Before I got too close, Ram, defending me fearlessly, waved a karate kick at the old monkey. The old monkey growled and ran away from us. Yep, these boys were not just our guides, but our personal bodyguards on the path up to the Monkey Temple, which turned out to be a highlight of our stay in Jaipur.
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