Erotic temples and some great western food!

Trip Start Feb 27, 2006

Trip End Mar 29, 2006

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Flag of India Khajuraho, India
Saturday, March 11, 2006

We left the peace and tranquility of under-developed Orcha and got a bus from Jhansi for 5 hours along a fairly bumpy road to Khajuraho. Not feeling in best of health, I was perched on the end of a row meant to be for three people. However a husband and his wife and son were sharing the other two seats along with a suitcase and another bag all squeezed into the already cramped leg space. So the entire journey was spent with me fighting a battle for every inch at every turn or bump in the road - I lost!

In Khajuraho, the 'westerners' were out in force as were the touts all anxious to get some commission on taking us to a hotel - soap, toilet roll, towels, rooftop views were all promised. We took a NZ girl living in the UK who had been on the bus with us - Justine - with us and visited various establishments all of them of similar poor standards. Khajuraho is a seriously developed tourist attraction and so full of restaurants offering a huge range of western fair (with an Indian twist), so we had a pit stop for lunch at an Italian (yipee no rice!!) place where the words 'chef trained in Rome' were emblazoned across the outside wall

Beautiful Khajuraho temple

. I forced myself to eat something. Eventually we settled on our hotels (although I moved the following night due to serious mozzie infestation). We all relaxed the for the rest of the day and met up for dinner in a rooftop restaurant opposite the Western temples compex to get a glimpse of these impressive structures during the sound and light show. We even got to sit in the tree house, although I'm not sure how safe it was. A lovely evening as much cooler since the rains - quite cool actually only 21 degrees.

Oh heaven the next day when I had home-made brown bread with peanut butter for breakfast! We hired a guide and took a tour of the Western group of temples. Built under Chandela kings between 950-1050 AD but then lost for centuries, there are 20 of the original 85 left and definitely amongst the finest in India. I'd been wanting to come here for ages and the temples did not disappoint. They are famous as the erotic temples, although only ten per cent of the carvings are erotic. The temples are a celebration of the delight in the world as seen through the eyes of the craftsmen - gods are young, handsome, round-bellied, adorned in jewels; godesses and attending women are voluptuous, maked from the waist up (although naked in some). The tantric sculptures represent shakti worship combining spiritual and sexual energy - they are very graphic with many poses from the Karma Sutra, with animals involved in some (I sure hope that my sister has read ahead and isn't reading this outloud to the kids!), helpers supporting couples to achieve various positions - this was seen as 'enabling' the sexual fulfilment to get to a higher level of spirituality

Bollywood Dinah in new sparkling outfit

. Contrasted with these scenes, it is strange that modern India is so repressed and segregated, using water imagery in Hindi films to represent sexual desire (although all of this is changing in some parts of society). Other carvings showed ladies pulling thorns out of their feet, elephants taking a peek at the erotic action, servants covering their eyes. All temples are set in beautifully manicured gardens.

I popped down to the little airport before lunch to get my expensive flight ticket to Varanasi, as I had decided to wimp out of the 11 hour bus and train journey in favour of an hour's flight! We then spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the temples and relaxing in the peace of the grounds. Then a fabulous pizza - oh it's so nice to be off Indian food for a while and some Kashmiri tea at the hotel shop as the Kashmiri shopkeeper played out the old patter and threw scarves and rugs around for Justine. Having not seen any tourist shops since my arrival in India, it took me back to me trip last year when every second shop was a Kashmiri seller with excellent English and a well rehearsed dialogue.

The next day, I discovered that my mobile hadn't been working since the SIM card had been inserted two weeks earlier! It turned out that I hadn't completed some piece of Indian bureaucracy so the service had been suspended - too difficult to resolve there and then! Justine and I went down to the Eastern Jain temples which were very quiet with no tourists and then took a spin round the old village accompanied by several men on bicycles! We had dinner at our tree house at Blue Sky again accompanied this time by a Dutch girl and a seriously gorgeous French Canadian guy!!