3rd day in India.
I was awake at 0600 and ready for breakfast. Shane was not far behind. We packed until the restaurant opened at 0700 then returned to the magnificent room for one last picture opportunity before checking out. This really was a palace. Our ‘room’ was actually 4 rooms totalling by my estimate to be over 100 sq mtrs.
We checked out and the porters carried our luggage to the car. One last wave & we were off to Khajuharo.
The drive was interesting to say the least. In most parts take away the people and the roadside shrines & we could have been near “The Towers” at home. Even the rocky ground cover was a granite very similar to NQ granite. What we have seen so far has been very overpowering. India sure is an attack on the senses. Temples and shrines pop up from nowhere. Otherwise rocky outcrops can have a magnificent fort or palace atop its peak. The colours are vibrant and the smells almost sting the olfactory buds. There are 3 wheeled autorickshaws with up to 15 -16 people on board and cars and motorbikes flirting with life and limb. And the people! Where can they all come from? Where can they be going? Why do they keep following me?
On the way to our next overnight stay we paused for a tour of another magnificent temple at a place called Occhre (?). This is another doozy from many centuries ago. There are still traces of the colourful decorations of Turqoise and Lapis Lazuli. This temple is so big it has it’s own 4 elephant garage. True! See the pic When I get to post them – soon. Seriously, it is magnificent (sorry but I’m running out of adjective here). Our guide for this temple was as enthusiastic as our guide in Gwalior. I guess for this job you need to love it. By the time we finished crawling over this temple like ants at a picnic we were stuffed and we still had a few hours drive to Khajuraho. Before I move on though I must tell you of a funny story about how this guide thought it would be funny to show us a 1600 year old dunny. “I’ll wager you’ve never seen one of these” he said. He was right! Anyway we were with a lady we’d met the night before at the UK Palace. Anke stepped with us through a narrow passageway and sure enough there it was. The oldest long drop dunny I’d ever seen. I peeked down the ‘hole’ and there 4 metres below looking back was a black faced monkey. These fellows can be troublesome but at least he was down ‘there’. However as we turned to exit there was another by the doorway. I’ll swear it was King Kong’s bigger brother it was so large. Baring its teeth even the guide was a bit concerned but putting on a brave face he said “Ignore it” but Anke was terrified. She, like many others, hates monkeys and frankly I wasn’t too happy to turn my back on this mongrel. Anyway with a lunge and much bravado we escaped having seen a 1600 year old dunny with our lives. To put it crudely, I think Anke might have needed that dunny once she saw the monkey there.
Off we went again on more of our road trip and a few hours later we were at Khajuraho, a very significant UNESCO place of interest. Again we were being treated royally staying at the Hotel Chandela Khajuraho. The reception area of this hotel was almost half an acre in size. Unfortunately for us this month signifies the beginning of the low season with the monsoons already a day or two overdue (apparently unlike our tropics where the monsoon/wet season starts ‘about November’ here it can be timed to the day) therefore the hotel was almost a ghost house with only about 3 other parties booked in to stay. This is to be a trend throughout this journey.
At Khajuraho we were shown a site where not uniquely a lost civilisation was rediscovered in the mid 1800’s by an English Soldier/bureaucrat. Think Maccha Picchu, the lost Incan’s, Mayan temples, Ankor Watt, and others. Here was a site that once was home to 85 temples and we’re not talking little church houses here. It is believed that after a takeover by an invader this entire area was ‘forgotten’. Some say purposefully to allude the invaders grasp others say a change in ruler removed the ‘need’ for this religious centre and so it just faded from memory. Whatever the reason a British surveyor found these ruins in the mid 1800’s mostly buried beneath the silt and neglect of many centuries. Now mostly excavated there are only 25 temples here however archaeologists are uncovering relics as technology (and public assistance) finds more sites and possibly more of the missing 60 temples.
Another highlight of this stop was returning to the temple site at sunset and watching the cultural light show that depicts the mythology of how a Hindu god saw a women bathing at night in a pool and decended from the moon to seduce her. At daybreak the God had to return to his lunar home. Afraid of being shamed the God promised she would give birth to a boy who would build the greatest series of temples ever seen and that would atone for their illicit actions. That ‘boy’ grew to be one of India’s greatest kings who built Khajuraho’s beginnings.
Early next morning we were up again and on the road. This time to Bandhavgarh to seek wild tigers.
That’s the next post but for now,
Cheers
Garry