A few clips of us with cobras in Jaipur and New Delhi, India. Dumb tourists. The cobra around my neck cost me 200 rupees for "very good picture. No bite, no bite."

To get to Amber Fort in Jaipur, you can walk or rent a jeep or ride an elephant. We picked the elephant ride. It's not a comortable thing - very bumpy and sometimes smelly.

We asked our driver if tourists ever got hurt. He said there was an incident where two elephants started fighting and it resulted in some sort of injury. He also said it's his responsibility to risk his life to protect us, but I'm not sure what a person can do about it once an elephant decides he's angry. I used iMovie's image stabilization on some of this and left it bumpy in other parts.

A few of the photos at the end are of nearby Jaighar Fort, which we visited later in the day. Enjoy:

We rode camels for 10 rupees (25 cents) each at a place called Chokhi Dhani outside the city of Jaipur in the state of Rajasthan, India. The place reminds me of the Polynesian Cultural Center on a smaller scale -- a village feel with activities representative of the culture in that state. I was talked into dancing twice. The very end of the video is Bob the Builder in Hindi:

It's impossible to capture the frenzy of India traffic on film, but that didn't stop me from holding my camera out the car window for minutes on end:

The phrase at the end is from a sign I saw along some of the roads - no one followed its advice.

I was in India for the first two weeks of October on business. My dad and uncle joined me for a week of it as tourists. I'm finally wading through all the photos and video and trying out iMovie for the first time, so the next few posts will probably be about the trip. When you get sick of it, go visit tvtropes.org. It has nothing to do with India, but is a strangely entertaining site.

We spent a 3-day weekend in Jaipur and visited the holy monkey temple called Galta. It's pretty well hidden with no signs to indicate you're on the right path. It was raining and a man on a motorcycle led us the last couple of miles there. We (unintentionally) timed this visit perfectly. We tried to feed a few monkeys some peanuts, but they were all running past us -- dozens of them descending the hill like fire ants after the mound is disturbed.

They were headed to a guy on the stairs cutting up cucumbers, zucchini, and tomatoes. We worked our way through the crowds of monkeys to the top of the stairs where a man beckoned for us to crawl into a small temple and leave a tip in exchange for a blessing.

Once the fresh food was gone, the monkeys regained interest in the peanuts we had purchased at the front gate. While I was distracted, a large monkey knocked the bag out of my hand and the peanuts spilled down the steps. Some of the aggressive ones would pull on your pant leg for a peanut. And if you held two or three peanuts in your hand, they would pry open your fingers to get them all at once. We were warned to not try this with monkeys you find elsewhere in the area -- these ones were accustomed to tourists.

These are rhesus monkeys. Photos of the more impressive (but not as friendly) langur monkeys coming in a later post.

Nuns taking photos with a cell phone at Amber Palace in Jaipur, India -

This is my Rajasthani dinner at a place called Chokhi Dhani, which is a little fake village with activities, food, and displays to teach visitors about the culture of Rajasthan, the largest state in the Republic of India. This photo was taken at the end of my meal and you'll notice that most of the food is still there. I try to be open-palated about food, but I was raised on meat and potatoes. I do like Americanized Mexican, Americanized Italian, and Americanized Thai food if that counts for anything.

I did eat a lot of bread and the dessert was awesome -- a crunchy thing covered in honey, maybe like elephant ears you find at fairs in the southern U.S. I never quite figured out what the white drink was -- the guy next to me kept telling me I'd love it because it's very "proteinous" but I didn't dare try it since I was told to only drink bottled water.

I also rode a camel at this place -- cost me 10 rupees, which is about 23 cents U.S. It was much less comfortable than I expected.

Snake charmers perform for the tourists at Jaipur Palace in India. The guy in the middle looks like he doesn't trust the guy to his left.