Friday, 11 March 2011

Harry, monkeys and boulders



Jantar Mantar
Hello! And welcome to the blog! Today I'm going to tell you How I have changed while I’ve changed since I’ve been in India and what has happened since I last wrote. (Mental note: I'm not going to do any colour in this message for I'm doing this on my mum's I pad.) So anyway, this time my adventure starts in Jaipur. The first big event was when we went to the biggest sundial on the PLANET, Jantar Mantar.
I'm afraid I can't remember very much about it because I was too busy saying to mum that I wanted to go back to the hotel and that it was hot, and lots more of those daily phrases. The next day we went to the Amber fort. (Mental note: it wasn't actually made of Amber) at it we... Err, we..... Damn. I was too busy fussing about the heat. But don't worry, you didn't miss very much. (Note from ma – yes you did! It was beautiful and had a whole room full of wonderful patterned glass tiles and were around 300 years old...) 
At the next place we went to we rode on elephants. We did not do a very long ride because the elephants were REALLY slow. After the ride we went to watch Elephant polo. (Polo is a game were people sit on horses with mallets and whack a ball into a goal.) It was like normal polo, except in slow motion and underwater.
Sorry, really terrible photo' of elephants
Well, next we went to a place called block printing. (note from ma - it was actually called The Anokhi Museum in Jaipur)  At it we printed our own T-shirts. We were given stamps and we dipped them in trays full of ink. Then we dried the shirts in an oven and then they were done. After that we went to the temple of the monkeys were 3000 no, 8000 monkeys lived. (Yet another not mental but insane note: if you want to hear how three members of our family including me had a near-death experience, then read on. If you are ahead of all of the others reading my blog, then go and tell your form teacher this.) First of all, we started at the start of the valley and we had brought bananas which the monkeys took from our driver and then a priest who worked there. As we went up, the sight of monkeys became less common.
Don't be fooled they're not that cute

This is where the ND experience happened. I was saying to mum how friendly the monkeys were and how none of them wanted to hurt us and how they were more frightened then us than we were of them when one of them decided to drop a foot-long boulder at our heads. It missed by an inch and made sparks scatter all over the banana-covered floor.
 We were as shocked as three bereaved sloth who realized they were dead. (note from ma – we really were. Harry, for once, is not exaggerating)
The next morning we drove to Chhatra Sagar. (Sagar means lake in Hindi and Chhatra is the name of the man who built it) The first event we did there was walking up a hill. At the top the sun was behind a cloud and I did a heroic pose which should be the picture below. (My sister did one but I don’t think it looked very heroic.) (Regurgitating note: dotted around our journeys we sometimes see little children with no pants or trousers on.) 
Harry looking heroic
Harry looking heroic slightly closer
In the next event we went to a farmer’s field. In it we saw barley, marrow, chilli, corn and aniseed. And the only thing that the farmer got to sleep on was a chaarpai. (char-pie) in English it means four goat legs. After that we went to a village. Most of the time we were sitting in an open-top jeep being barked at by boys speaking Hindi. (Boring note: later I have an other ND experience.)  After that we went to a potter who was making pots (I have to say you`d have to be pretty stupid to not realize that.) when I was going back to the jeep, I walked past a pack of dogs. One of them started growling. When I went really close it jumped up and started chasing and barking at me. (Even if it managed to get me on the ground, I still know how to break its neck.)

The next thing we did was go on a nature walk. In the first two mins on the nature walk we found a pile of bones. For the rest of the journey we were pretending to clobber each other with the bones. The next event was driving to Rawla Narlai. The next day we climbed a mountain. The mountain was 20 times bigger than it looked. (note from ma – they usually are)
The pool and...the boulder. 
After we climbed it we took a dip in the pool. After that I wrote what I’m writing right now.
Well, it seems I have comprehended all I can comprehend. (Wow! These words don’t have red lines underneath them!) Goodbye! Click!
Harry blogging at Rawla Narlai