On a recent adventure trip to Shimla-Manali, Jakoo Temple was one of the place I could say that I witnessed an amazing event. It was a cold December night (I mean it, for a South Indian whose skin is adapted to temperature of 20-400 C, North is a cold place!) and after a fun filled day our guide/driver informed us (me n Santy) that we were about to visit a temple which gives us amazing view of Shimla, little were we aware what was in store (taden taden taden!!!,just wanted to do that from a long time, gives good effect while reading).We reach this place at around 8,ladded with multilayer clothing( it was quite difficult to recognize me from a distance as I looked like an Eskimo),I got down from the car and it was an uphill climb of around 200 steps from where the car was parked. With lot of heavy cold breathing ,we climbed upstairs and reached approx half the distance, when from no where a mama monkey(I know it’s a mama monkey coz the baby was clinging to its body so please don’t ask me how I came to know it was a female!!) just walks towards us, our driver who was leading the way stands still, pushes his body forward and then the monkey stands on its feet and with its arm searches the pockets of the jacket and the pant and we are left with nothing but amazement and next it was time for my security check and it is quite strange coz you normally don’t expect monkeys to do that, the same was repeated with Santy and science says that if an experiment is repeated thrice and it gives you the same result it is a proven fact!!! The driver instructed us not to panic and move coz the place is filled with over a 1000 monkeys by daytime and since its night there might be around 50 still there, I had no plans of escaping, as I didn’t want to try man Vs beast episode there! He told us not to stare at them coz that will make them follow more! He also informed that they only search for eatables like Prasad in the pockets and mean no harm (wow! that was like some good news!!).After individual security check we reached top of the temple where there is a 108 feet tall statue of God Hanuman which can be seen from any point in Shimla. We do a very short prayer mainly coz of two reason, firstly its damn cold and we wanted to leave, secondly too many monkeys staring is damn scary. At quite fast pace we climb down and enter into the car and escape down into the beautiful roads of Shimla. Back home, when we were narrating this incident, dad in law jokingly said that we could have got some of the monkeys back home coz they would have proved as better security guards than the current ones at the apartment!
