Galtaji Temple Complex

The Galtaji Temple Complex, also called the Monkey Temple, lies in a narrow hill pass in the Aravalli range on the Galta Gate road, east of the Old City of Jaipur in Rajasthan, India. Tradition holds that the sage Galav meditated here, and the valley has been a pilgrimage site for centuries, long before Jaipur itself was founded in 1727. The complex became an important centre of the Ramanandi sect of Vaishnavas, whose founder Ramanand is associated with it, and the Kachwaha rulers of Dhundhar patronised it, with most surviving buildings dating from the 16th to 18th centuries. Much of the present architecture was built or renewed under Jaipur's rulers, including Diwan Rao Kripa Ram, a courtier of Sawai Jai Singh II. The complex is a cluster of temples, shrines, pavilions and residences strung along a natural spring, with seven sacred kunds, or water tanks, fed by a perennial stream that flows down from the hills. The two largest, the Galta Kund and Surya Kund, are said never to dry up, and pilgrims bathe in them, especially during festivals such as Makar Sankranti. The buildings are painted in pink sandstone with domes, chhatris, carved balconies and frescoed walls, and the hilltop Surya Temple, built by Kripa Ram, overlooks the valley. Troops of rhesus macaques live in the complex and in the surrounding rocks, which gives the site its popular name. It is an active religious site, not a curated museum, so visitors move through courtyards and along walkways in the order of the pilgrim route, with no formal exhibition sequence. Several buildings show peeling paint, damp and neglect, although conservation work has been carried out by the Rajasthan authorities and the Galta Peeth trust over past decades. A steep walk from the Galta Gate leads up to the complex, and from the upper temple the views take in the whole of Jaipur.