Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Day 6: The Real India

Today we hit the road for Ranthambhore. Raj told us Delhi, Agra and Jaipur make up the “Golden Triangle of India” (the must-see sightseeing spots), but now we head to the real India. Finally, we’re seeing the kind of India I imagined, and finally, it is beautiful.
Each city seemed to have a specialty. In Ranthambhore, it was handmade textiles. 

Our hotel is the Pugmark and it is definitely my favorite so far. Five stars it is not, but what it lacks in amenities it more than makes up for in beauty, charm and authenticity. The grounds are covered in flowering bushes and mango trees. Monkeys are everywhere, and lizards slip in the door with you at night.
I loved the Pugmark Hotel. The grounds were beautiful; staff were working in the gardens constantly. 

The staff is sweet and helpful; I think they are as interested in us as we are in the tigers (Ranthambhore’s main attraction). Waiters will stop and have entire conversations, patiently answering our questions about their life and families. They even threw us an India barbecue.

Our room is small, but comfy. There’s a single wall unit air conditioner, but it does the trick. The power shuts off periodically and in the three to five minutes it takes for someone to flip on the generator the temp in the room shoots up almost immediately.

Fortunately, we were only menaced from a distance by the small, but naughty, black-faced monkeys. One man in our group was surrounded by a gang of four-foot tall monkeys who, evidently, were interested in mangos.
Cheeky monkey. 

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