Monkey see, Dimwit do

The Hotel Om, my current Pushkar abode, advertises the following "facilities available":

• Ordinary, Delux, AC & Non-AC Room
• Garden Buffet Restaurant and Swimming Pool
• Tours, Travel & Safari Booking
• International & Domestic Calls
• Doctor on Call
• Two Minute Far from the Ajmer Bus-stand
• Free: Cheropractor, Faith Healer, Tradition Bonesetter, Astrologer

Yes, you read that correctly. I was totally interested in the faith healing and free astrology. Sign me up, yesterday already. So today I stopped and asked the Hotel Manager about the Astrology. I point to it on the card and say "Can I ask you about this?"

"What's happened?" he says, looking me over. "what's happened?"

"Nothing, I was just wondering-"

"My boss does this work," he says, and continues to explain that his boss is an excellent bonesetter and demonstrates how if one is injured, his boss can re-align their spine, their knee, their leg. He makes all the appropriate noises as he does this demonstration on himself "crick" "creek" "crack".

So I ask "but the Astrology?"

"Yes, my boss can fix."

"Uhm, in English, astrology means jyotish." (The Indian word for astrologer is jyotish, from the root jyoti, meaning light.)

The manager wobbles his head and says, "Not always."

I say "Uhm... Usually, yes. Astrologer reads your birth chart, talks about, astrological things." Bonesetting, not so much. Though, if everyone in Canada started multi-tasking like they do here, who knows what could happen. In Pushkar it appears to be a combination of Money Changer/Travel Agent/Camel Safari Guide/Internet Provider.

I think I should give up on having my chart read in India

I said to Rich afterwards that I really can't figure out what word they could be thinking of, to have put it on their business cards. In fact, I was going to title this entry "Your guess is as good as mine" but then, this afternoon I met this guy who I would call the village idiot on my hike up to the hilltop temple, but he's a tourist, not a local, so he's more like the "visiting from a foreign metropolis idiot".

That hilltop temple climb nearly killed me. Let's just remember, I haven't had full lung capacity since mid-December. I was wheezing and hacking my way up there, and everyone passed us. Except for three senior women, who were climbing up the stairs, using their hands as well so they were truly 'climbing'. I was trying to step up without having to push off my right knee repeatedly. One of the women said to me "Slowly, slowly." But really, at that point I couldn't stop moving or the fire that was consuming my legs would have forced me to quit, and so close to the top?

Please note: I passed them on the way down too, and they had a good 10 minute start.

Okay then, sign me up for the Sun Run, I beat three women in their late 60's up to the top and back to base camp. I think the hill is 750 feet, from the guide book, but I don't know for sure, because at some point my survival instinct kicked in and I couldn't remember what the hell the guidebook said or why I thought this hare-brained idea seemed so great at the time

The view of Pushkar and the surrounding valley was spectacular.

Then there was the climb down to manage.

Not far from the top, we come across a man feeding the monkeys.

This I could not believe. The monkeys had been running around, making the climb up look sooooo easy, all I could think was "Stay away, monkeys. You use trees, I'll use the stairs." Monkeys don't communicate with telepathy like dolphins, so they hung around a little too close but still, they kept a decent distance.

I called out to the man plying the monkeys with peanuts "Sir, I don't think that's a good idea." It was a crummy idea, especially because he now had a pack of 12 hungry monkeys sitting on the stairs and blocking our path.

Rich says, "Yeah, you shouldn't feed them."

In heavily accented English the guy responds "No, no, it's okay." He continues feeding them while Rich finds an opening and steps around them. "I know what I'm doing," says Dimwit.

"Have you read the Lonely Planet Guide?" I ask him, with a sharp tone in my voice, just as a monkey decides to cross my path. (Read: this monkey stops directly in front of me, of where I need to go, and looks up at me) I hold my hands up like I'm in a John Wayne Western and say "I have no food," to the monkey. To the Dimwit I say "It says 30,000 people die from dog and monkey bites every year in India."

"Don't talk to the monkey," he says, like I'm the moron in this picture. The monkey bared it's teeth at me. "Just walk around, it will leave you alone when it knows you have no food... More people die in Europe from traffic accidents every year."

"Really?" I stepped around the monkey slowly, keeping my hands up in the air, "well, lots of people die of heroin overdoses in Vancouver but I still think you're increasing your odds of being bitten by surrounding yourself with monkeys."

As I spoke, the monkey at his feet grabbed his hand, in what I considered to be a "Hey stupid, I want more peanuts" gesture. I moved as quickly as possible to put as much distance between me, the dimwit and the hungry monkeys as possible. Those poor women were still behind me too, coming down the hillside steps. (On the way up, I watched as they also avoided the monkeys)

As the three famous monkeys teach: see no stupidity, hear no stupidity, repeat no stupidity.