Dear All,
Firstly, Congrats to bec and laura for completing all their exams and graduating high school!!! Woohoo, good job. Time to relax and have a ball at schoolies (:
In total we spent 4 nights in Varanasi watching the city. It was noisy, dirty and confronting yet colourful and amazing at the same time. The highlight of Varanasi was riding in a paddle boat down the river watching the bathers and activities along the ghats. It was also the first time we have seen rain since leaving Scotland!
We left Varanasi and caught a train at what was suppose to be 11pm but quickly became 12 midnight. I read that India has an amazingly on time very organised rail way system. So far I’m not convinced 2 out of 2 trains have been running late, the website for booking the trains the most difficult unreliable website ever and the stations themselves are chaotic. Varanasi is a large station not only for people but for cargo also. We stood waiting at the platform for a while and then went back to the main entrance to check however a ridiculously large cow was standing in the doorway on its way onto the platform. Real handy.
Finally arrived in Satna at 8am after sleeping surprisingly well on the train. From Satna we travelled for 2 hours in a 4WD to Khajuraho. We travelled with 2 other foreigners, Mike and Maureen from Canada. We were swamped with offers as we got off the train and in the end the drivers paraded their cars and we choose a sturdy red thing, did the job very well.
Arrived in Khajuraho just after 10am and made our way to Hotel Zen. Clean hotel with pretty gardens and our double bed room with hot water shower and toilet costs 300 rupees per night ($6 aussie). Not every hotel has a pet white rabbit though! Not that that was the selling point for us, but a big white rabbit called lasoo wanders the hotel foyer.
We were in Khajuraho to see the temples. There is a large park area that houses around 10 temples that were built by the Chandela’s (ruling family of the time and area) around 950 AD, however there are also smaller temples around the village. The temples are unlike any other temple I’ve ever see not just their spiral structure but also because they are covered in highly erotic scenes. Scenes with very curvy naked men and women and not just couples but three or four or a few more people, on top of that not just people there were horses and elephants involved as well. Archaeologists aren’t really sure why the temples are covered in such erotic material, however any good souvenir shop will tell you it’s a teaching guide so they can sell karma sutra books. It was quiet shocking and I almost feel like adding a M15+ rating to our photos. Definitely unlike any other temples I have ever seen. Not just the foreigners found it shocking as well, we noticed several groups of adolescent men wandering and giggling…
The park surrounding the temples was gorgeous and we spent a few hours wandering and found hundreds of stripey squirrels and a few squirrels who were squeaking at a snake in a tree. Also saw a beautiful Indian roller bird, they’re about the size of a parrot and are tawny coloured apart from its wings and tail which are a amazing turquoise blue. I didn’t expect to see so much wildlife in India.
We were lucky to visit the temples on World Heritage day so got free entry and saved ourselves 500 rupees ($10 aussie). As we were leaving we were lassoed with flower garlands, shuffled to the front gate under the world heritage sign and posing with some local officials. Who knows maybe we’ll feature in a local newspaper.
We hired bikes for the day and spent the rest of the day riding around town, being invited into all varieties of shops, hotels or restaurants and avoiding hitting cows, dogs, chickens, goats, hairy pigs, other cyclists and then in turn avoiding being hit by crazy tuk tuk drivers (3 wheeled motorbikes with carriage) and buses. Dan broke the pedal of his bike so we returned to the bike shop and it was fixed free of charge, probably because the bike looks like its about to fall apart anyway (we hired them for 20 rupees for day, so about 30 cents aussie…I had no brakes). In the end I had such a sore bum we retired the bikes, patted the hotel rabbit and had a nap.
So far the food in India has been amazing! Nothing nasty yet. We’ve been having a variety of vegetable curries and rice with naan or chapattis (flat bread). The best food has been the street vendors selling the fresh samosas and pakora. However there’s a lot of choice if you don’t feel like Indian with a lot of restaurants covering all bases offering “Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Italian and Continental”..that’s impressive for just one small restaurant! So far we’ve stuck to Indian or at least a restaurant that specifies in one type of cuisine.
We (were still travelling as four with Maureen and mike) left Khajuraho early on Friday morning, had a cup of hot chai (very sweet milky tea) and boarded a 5 hour bus ride to Jhansi. But this was no ordinary bus ride, instead of advertising bus they should write “extremely rickety roller coaster which shouldn’t be boarded unless there are no other means of travel”. We bounced our way to Jhansi over the worst roads Dan and I have seen, it was only 147km but took us 5 hours, that’s how many potholes we bounced over and how many we couldn’t avoid so the driver just sped through them. It was rough.
At Jhansi we purchased train tickets for Agra (home to the Taj Mahal) for Sunday and then made our way to Orcha.
Orcha is a very small town with an amazing fort and a gorgeous temple and lucky us tomorrow is a massive festival day! Will let you know how the festivities go, so far we’ve noticed lights and tinsel and microphones, so its looking loud and colourful already.
Hope all is well,
Love always, jess xoxo
managed only 3 photos because the net is being slow..
