Khajuraho
After saying goodbye to our new friends in Varanasi we boarded another overnight train, however this time it was more sedate affair as Charlotte insisted on traveling in "anything other than Sleeper class" and booked us into the AC3 carriage. This was a totally different experience, mainly because only people with tickets are allowed into the carriage (meaning we weren't likely to see a repeat of the bedlam that preceded our last train trip) but also because along with Flori we appeared to be the only people in the carriage.
The night passed uneventfully enough with the only real excitement being Matt refusing the pay a policeman a 200 rupee "fine" for smoking out the door. Matt provided him with a "frank" response (which we won't repeat here!!) due to the fact that while the policeman was very diligent in his pursuit of foreign law breakers he didn't seem that bothered about all the Indian guys also having a crafty smoke.....funny that. The fine remained unpaid and the next morning we rolled into a place called Khajuraho a town famous for it's temples featuring thousands of erotic carvings depicting scenes from the Kama Sutra (oooh I say !).
The guide book makes some mention of the fact that "some people prefer the nearby laidback town of Orcha to the bustle of Khajuraho", we now realise that this is a euphemism for "everybody in Khajuraho is a money grabbing git who won't give you a minutes peace...". This should have been apparent when we stepped off the train and were mobbed by about 50 shrieking hotel touts desperate to get us to come see their place, but we were tired and we just wanted to get to a hotel so we picked the least mental looking one and went with him. Then once we settled in with a beer and found ourselves watching the best sunset we've seen yet things didn't seem so bad
The next morning we got up early to go and check out the temples which allegedly represent the finest examples of Hindu carving anywhere in the world, this is due to the fact that they lay undiscovered (by white people that is) in the jungle for hundreds of years meaning they were safe from the Muslim invaders who defaced and destroyed so many other temples on their rampage
Although when you get up close you start to notice a theme within the carvings
Dirty buggers !
But very skilled nonetheless !
We also learned that Indian women "love" their horses even more than 13 year old middle class English girls - but alas those carvings were too high up the temple to get a decent picture !
After a couple of hours of making sketches and taking notes for future reference we had to curtail our tour as Matt was coming down with a fever...Yes ! that's right, for the first time MATT was properly sick and Charlotte was the one playing nursemaid. So after stumbling back to the hotel, all the way fending off aggressive salesmen, rickshaw touts and precocious money-grabbing children, Matt collapsed for a 24 hour period of vomiting, shivering and sweating....this was a shame because after 6 weeks of traveling together it was time for us to say goodbye to Flori who was heading to Delhi that night. With this in mind and despite the suffering it would cause him Matt managed to muster up the strength to have one last beer with him & Charlotte
As soon as Matt had recovered we decided that we'd had enough of Khajuraho and it's constant plea's for "Money, Money, Moneeeeeeeeeeeeeeyy !!!" so we headed off to the bus station to catch a bus to Orcha....
Orcha
Turns out the bus didn't actually go to Orcha (another example of Indians inability to say "no!!") so instead we had to get it to pull over at the side of the road near the Orcha turn-off where we assured that we could get a rickshaw down to the town. However before doing that we decided that we needed a chai and sat down at the roadside tea stall. As we sat there three things happened 1) a huge bull mounted an unsuspecting cow right in front of us 2) Charlotte completely forget herself and out of nowhere leapt up pointing and shouting "BULL F*CK, BULL F*CK, BULL F*CK !!!" (Charlotte was instantly mortified- the Indians however howled with laughter) and 3) two European looking guys appeared out of nowhere looking lost - and a new euro-love affair was born!!. Our new friends from Bilbao in Spain were called Josu & Roberto and were also going to Orcha so after we finished our chai we all hopped into a rickshaw and headed into town with Matt taking full advantage of the opportunity to talk about football with someone who was actually interested in it as opposed to talking at Charlotte who enjoys it about as much as Matt enjoys chatting about politics / women's rights.
We were immediately a lot happier in Orcha which had a much more "shanti" (Hindi for "chilled out") feel to it.....although this may have been because we weren't constantly surrounded by a baying pack of children & touts...and after some food and some rest we were ready to get down to some serious drinking with our new Spanish friends and also conduct some English / Spanish lessons with the boys (although their English is much better than our Spanish)..
After saying goodbye to our new friends in Varanasi we boarded another overnight train, however this time it was more sedate affair as Charlotte insisted on traveling in "anything other than Sleeper class" and booked us into the AC3 carriage. This was a totally different experience, mainly because only people with tickets are allowed into the carriage (meaning we weren't likely to see a repeat of the bedlam that preceded our last train trip) but also because along with Flori we appeared to be the only people in the carriage.
The night passed uneventfully enough with the only real excitement being Matt refusing the pay a policeman a 200 rupee "fine" for smoking out the door. Matt provided him with a "frank" response (which we won't repeat here!!) due to the fact that while the policeman was very diligent in his pursuit of foreign law breakers he didn't seem that bothered about all the Indian guys also having a crafty smoke.....funny that. The fine remained unpaid and the next morning we rolled into a place called Khajuraho a town famous for it's temples featuring thousands of erotic carvings depicting scenes from the Kama Sutra (oooh I say !).
The guide book makes some mention of the fact that "some people prefer the nearby laidback town of Orcha to the bustle of Khajuraho", we now realise that this is a euphemism for "everybody in Khajuraho is a money grabbing git who won't give you a minutes peace...". This should have been apparent when we stepped off the train and were mobbed by about 50 shrieking hotel touts desperate to get us to come see their place, but we were tired and we just wanted to get to a hotel so we picked the least mental looking one and went with him. Then once we settled in with a beer and found ourselves watching the best sunset we've seen yet things didn't seem so bad
The next morning we got up early to go and check out the temples which allegedly represent the finest examples of Hindu carving anywhere in the world, this is due to the fact that they lay undiscovered (by white people that is) in the jungle for hundreds of years meaning they were safe from the Muslim invaders who defaced and destroyed so many other temples on their rampage
And very impressive they are too !
Although when you get up close you start to notice a theme within the carvings
Dirty buggers !
But very skilled nonetheless !
We also learned that Indian women "love" their horses even more than 13 year old middle class English girls - but alas those carvings were too high up the temple to get a decent picture !
After a couple of hours of making sketches and taking notes for future reference we had to curtail our tour as Matt was coming down with a fever...Yes ! that's right, for the first time MATT was properly sick and Charlotte was the one playing nursemaid. So after stumbling back to the hotel, all the way fending off aggressive salesmen, rickshaw touts and precocious money-grabbing children, Matt collapsed for a 24 hour period of vomiting, shivering and sweating....this was a shame because after 6 weeks of traveling together it was time for us to say goodbye to Flori who was heading to Delhi that night. With this in mind and despite the suffering it would cause him Matt managed to muster up the strength to have one last beer with him & Charlotte
As soon as Matt had recovered we decided that we'd had enough of Khajuraho and it's constant plea's for "Money, Money, Moneeeeeeeeeeeeeeyy !!!" so we headed off to the bus station to catch a bus to Orcha....
Orcha
Turns out the bus didn't actually go to Orcha (another example of Indians inability to say "no!!") so instead we had to get it to pull over at the side of the road near the Orcha turn-off where we assured that we could get a rickshaw down to the town. However before doing that we decided that we needed a chai and sat down at the roadside tea stall. As we sat there three things happened 1) a huge bull mounted an unsuspecting cow right in front of us 2) Charlotte completely forget herself and out of nowhere leapt up pointing and shouting "BULL F*CK, BULL F*CK, BULL F*CK !!!" (Charlotte was instantly mortified- the Indians however howled with laughter) and 3) two European looking guys appeared out of nowhere looking lost - and a new euro-love affair was born!!. Our new friends from Bilbao in Spain were called Josu & Roberto and were also going to Orcha so after we finished our chai we all hopped into a rickshaw and headed into town with Matt taking full advantage of the opportunity to talk about football with someone who was actually interested in it as opposed to talking at Charlotte who enjoys it about as much as Matt enjoys chatting about politics / women's rights.
We were immediately a lot happier in Orcha which had a much more "shanti" (Hindi for "chilled out") feel to it.....although this may have been because we weren't constantly surrounded by a baying pack of children & touts...and after some food and some rest we were ready to get down to some serious drinking with our new Spanish friends and also conduct some English / Spanish lessons with the boys (although their English is much better than our Spanish)..
The next day with our hangovers fully intact and Charlotte still murdering the Spanish language at every available opportunity we all rented push bikes and set off to find a nearby river where we had been told you could swim, which in the heat & humidity of the tail end of monsoon sounded like a godsend. The bikes were of questionable quality and Charlotte's weighed about the same as a small hatchback so getting up the hill at the edge of town was our first challenge. Once we had wheezed our way to the top of this obstacle the next task was finding the river which when we eventually did, with the help of some enthusiastic local kids, was worth the effort as the river consisted of numerous large rock-pools all of which we could swim in
On our way back into town the monsoon decided to show us that it wasn't quite done yet and the heavens opened meaning that we got wetter than when we'd been swimming and turning Charlotte's top almost see through, giving the already sexually frustrated Indian men that we encountered the thrill of their lives "Oh my god I can see that white woman's BRA !!"
During this time we learned that the boys are amateur film-makers producing short films recording their trip around the world - if you get the chance and you speak a bit of Spanish I strongly recommend you checkout their blog at http://proyectovivi.blogspot.com/ - So we duly offered our services as supporting actors in their next production and lo and behold later that night we were treated to the first screening of Tres Hombres, Una Mujer Y Un Destino (3 men, 1 woman and 1 destiny) which you can see below
That evening we noticed that there were loads of Indians riding around on trucks & rickshaws with HUGE sound systems throwing coloured powder everywhere for Lord Ganesha's birthday (he's the god with an Elephants head) so they were all celebrating....although nobody could tell us how old he was. The celebrations continued well into the next day with the Indians getting more and more crazy until, well take a look.....
The next day we packed our bags again and jumped in a rickshaw to Jhansi with our Spanish friends to catch our train to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, but not before making Charlotte pose for one last photo with the boys (and a random Indian) in front of our respective football team flags
Then after saying adios amigos we set out for Agra.....
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