Friday : sunny

The sky was much clearer today, pity we weren't at the lookouts. We had a quick early breakfast, then we were on the road again.

We stopped off at a temple, where our driver Yudhvir had his morning pray. It was interesting seeing the real deal, people hitting bells praying and going up and getting there Tika (the red dot on the forehead) but Yudhvir's was orange, not sure if it because he's male? We were only there for maybe 10-15 min, we got back into the car and had a short but busy drive to a nice little palace.

It was a small palace maybe only 4 bedrooms, but it has beautiful gardens and fountains out the back. One of the Maharaja's wives wanted her own palace because she didn't want to live with the other wives, snobby b#%*h. The palace didn't need to be all that big, but it would be a nice place to live thats for sure.

The temple and small palace were just a quick stop off on the way to our main attraction for the day Galta Mandrid (monkey temple) very pretty and interesting place. The temple houses hundreds of monkeys, two types of monkeys live here, the nice Langurs and the mean Macaques. We didn't see many of the black faced friendly monkeys, they were mainly on the road in and at the bottom of the hill. We saw heaps of the mean, fighting, naughty Macaques, they're aggressive things, but are still able to be fed if you approach them with an open palm. The temple is in a nice little valley surrounded by cliffs and it also has baths where the locals can wash and pray in.

We hit the open road soon enough making our way to Ranthambore. We took a right turn off the highway, and it didn't take too long before we hit some bad roads. The pace slowed up dramatically dodging all the pot holes. We passed through tiny towns that if we were to blink we would of missed it. Other towns seemed like we would never leave because of the traffic, and we had everyone peeping in through the windows looking at us too. The car didn't help having a large front window sticker saying Tourist, its pretty embarrassing. The type of mens clothing started to change too like the roads, there were a lot of turban wearing farmers in white robes walking around. They were either driving camels or a tractor, or sitting in a hut with 20 or more blokes playing cards.

It was a very bumpy road to Ranthambore, but we were glad to of done the trip in a new A/C car rather then a train or bus.

We got to our hotel, and immediately I wanted to clip the receptionist around the ears, HARD! He was an absolute jerk. Like the last hotel in Jaipur, the hotel service and friendliness has gone out the window since Delhi. We checked into our room and then had to rearranged all the furniture. There was barely enough room to swing a cat the way they had it setup, they had tables blocking the bathroom door and windows.

Because the receptionist tried to charge us double for tickets for the tiger safari we want to do tomorrow. We went to source out prices outside the hotel, we got a price, but it's not the vehicle we wanted. We were after a gypsy 4wd it's just a soft top Suzuki Sierra, but there are no seats available. Its apparently peak season here in india, but we have barely seen any white tourists, and in peak season people obviously charge more. The only seats available are for the canter. A chop shop flat bed truck with 20 seats, they're suppose to be rowdy and loud, something you don't want when you looking for tigers in the bush.

We passed on the tickets, and tried to hunt for some gypsy tix, probably something we would later regret. We thought that we would call our tour agent and blow up at them. Saying that we should of been told about the availability of the safari seats earlier, and it would of been so easy to buy tickets back in Delhi, seeing how they have a website. The national park only allows a small number if vehicles into the park at one time, it's a good idea but I wish we were told this information earlier.

The agent didn't understand our situation, with not wanting canter tickets over the phone, he said he would try making a few phone calls and call us back. Which he did, and he told us that the gypsy tickets are sold out and to go to the park ticket office and buy canter tickets. At this stage it was late in the arvo and we were getting pretty worried that we wouldn't end up with any tickets, and miss out on the safari completely. Turning this detour to Ranthambore a complete waste of time and money.

So we were back in the car and drove to the park office that was Closed Ha! OK now we had the poos and wees properly. Someone at the office said to come back tomorrow morning at 4.30am and line up for tickets then.

Line up? At 4.30am? Right...

So we came up empty handed today, no safari tickets, and having to get up ridiculously early tomorrow. Now we wished we bought those tickets earlier.

We got dropped off to a restaurant close by our hotel and had a nice relaxing meal. It was a good morning but a crappy afternoon.

We didn't do much after dinner, the TV didn't work so no movie tonight we just got cleaned up for bed and listened to some podcasts, trying to laugh for a change. It was hard knowing that tomorrow we could still have no tickets.