Monkey See, Monkey Do--Not Bite Me

Umm... So did I forget to tell you about the weekend I went to a monkey fort??? 'Cause I'm thinkin that I did. Mah bad. I shall remedy this immediately.

I went with friends Allegra (shout-out!), Lauren, Erin, Hannah & Eric two weekends ago, 17-19 September, to a city called Aurangabad, and more specifically to an old fort that looked like like Helms Deep... but with monkeys. Luckily, we got this picture right before a man sprinted over to us, wide-eyed, with arms waving madly, calling, "NOOO! Do not do this thing!!" So, it turns out that monkeys "will steal yure camrrah!" And then, "they weel bite you!" Narrow escape. But look how cuuuute he eees! :)

Anyhoosiers, the real point of our excursion was to explore Ajanta and Ellora, some wicked old caves near Aurangabad carved by these crazy awesome Buddhist monks. Because this was Ante-Camera Loss 2010, I got some snaps. Ch-ch-check it:

^^ Ajanta \/ \/

^Sweet waterfall at Ajanta...

...and Allegra drinking said waterfall. All of it.

Our guide says, "See the blue hat with blue socks? Yes, yes, ancient India invented matching."

Oh and we went to Rivendell! :)

(Okay, well, no... no, actually we didn't really... But hey, aren't the Ellora caves awesome?)

We took an intermission between the two sets of caves to check out the Bibi-Ka-Maqbara, or th the Mini-Taj Mahal. The five of us affectionately renamed it the "Taj Ma-Small."

Admit it: that's pretty clever.

And we took artsy photos...

and awkward photos... :)

and laid in the grass to watch the sunset...

And then we answered Eric's excited calls for "Monkey Fort! Monkey Fort! Monkey Fort!"

^^more of the fort. and erin... with the fort.

Holding onto another's tail:

So freaking human-like...