Okay, we’re getting to the end. We got another guy to drive us from Jodhpur to Udaipur, stopping along the way to see the Jain temples at Ranakpur and then have lunch. Ranakpur is a tiny town not that far outside of Udaipur, but it does have some very attractive temples in it which I did a basically terrible job of photographing. Here is what the main one looks like from the front if you are a little bit tilted:

The interior is incredibly intricately carved columns and domes:

There are a lot of little courtyards:

And this is up in the hills so there are trees all around. Off in the distance (this is from a balcony) you can see a smaller temple:

I was immediately grabbed when I went into the temple by a fellow who claimed to be the high priest of the temple. Probably he wasn’t! He claimed he was better than the audio guide (I missed out on these again) though I have my doubts on this and still cannot really explain the architecture of Jain temples whereas Harriet probably can. But he took me on a whirlwind tour of the place and pointed out a lot of things very quickly, possibly because he was trying to avoid the authorities. He did give an address for the Jain temple in New York that seemed reasonably accurate, and I was impressed with that. You would do better to go to Wikipedia, which describes the place in some detail and has pictures of the best parts. Evidently each of the temple’s 1444 columns is individually carved and you could spend a long time looking at them all if you were so inclined.

The grounds of the temple are kept up beautifully and it’s pleasant to wander around: there are a couple of smaller temples as well.

This is one of the smaller temples:

Also the place is infested with monkeys. Here you see how the monkeys here have long tails:

And here another monkey considers his options:

I don’t understand why every single picture I took in Ranakpur seems to be tilted:

Maybe I was coming down with something? It doesn’t make any sense. None of my other pictures are tilted like this.

At least you get a sense what it was like to lurch through Ranakpur. I don’t remember lurching that much, but can the pictures really lie? I don’t know.

After we went to Ranakpur our driver took us to lunch at some place nearby where they had an ox-driven irrigation system that seemed to exist for the entertainment of small girls:

It was a pretty good time. Then we went to Udaipur.