Written by Nelly
Written on May 13th, 2005 in Varanasi Freebies Orchha was an old capital of the Bundelas who ruled the central part of India in the 16th Century. To get to Pushkar from Orchha we had to hop through a couple of cities: Pushkar, Ajmer, Agra, Jhansi, and finally Orchha. We took an overnight bus from Ajmer to Agra. After arriving in Agra at 6:00 am in the morning, we went to the train station to catch a train to Jhansi. We arrived at the train station at 6:29 am as the 6:30 train to Jhansi was about to leave. Since the ticket lines were so long we decided to get on the train and pay the conductor for the tickets. Jhansi is about 215 km away from Agra, and we were on the slow passenger train which stopped at every station. The journey lasted eight gruelling hours. In the last hour, a friendly family sat across from us. Two young women dressed in beautiful saris and their children. They bought us some super yummy lentil onion salad sold by an old lady on the train. Unfortunately we spoke little Hindi and they were too shy to speak English. After finally getting off at Jhansi and waving goodbye to our new friends, we realized that the conductor never showed up and we had ridden 215 km on the Indian Railway for free!
Small town feel It's hard to imagine that Orccha was once the capital of a state, considering how small it is with only 8000 residents. There was one main street, on one end is the magnificent fort which was once the abode of the Bundela Rajput chief, on the other end are the temples. The guesthouses and restaurants can be found on this one street. Doctors visit I'll let Jesse narrate this one: Oh boy, so I had just been counting my lucky stars that I'd survived 3 weeks of India without gaining an intimate knowledge of any toilets. Well that came to a screeching halt in Orcha. I must have built up some bad karma by yelling at one too many infuriating rickshaw drivers. After eating at the nicer restaurant in town we went home to retire for a leisurely evening in front of the boob tube watching BBC. This is the first TV we'd seen in weeks and as good Americans we had to get our fix.
Soon after lying down I found myself jumping up and sprinting to the can. This became the nightly routine as I found myself sitting or crouching over my newfound, porcelin friend. Man, I haven't been this violently sick in years. Since we didn't know if it was food poisoning that made me sick, we thought it was possible that I had gotten poisoning from our mosquito coil in our poorly ventilated room. So I tried sleeping outside on the balcony with the hotel staff to get some fresh air. The air was fresh and cool, but the marble floor was a little hard. So back inside I went to writhe around in mock pain and mock sleep. Finally morning rolls around and I shoo Nelly out the door with instructions to come back with a doctor. Downstairs she talks to one of the hotel staff who immediatly runs off to fetch a doctor. Twenty minutes later there is a doctor in my room poking and prodding me. Sure enough I had some serious stomach and intestine bug. He prescribed the appropriate drugs and was off with Nelly to get them from his medicine cabinet. After getting the drugs Nelly asked him what she owed him. He thought for a second and said 250 Rupees! That amounts to $5.80 for an at home doctor visit including 4 different sets of drugs, one of those being an antibiotic. That's less that my insurance co-pay.
What's Next Next we're off to Khajuraho to see what is supposedly the finest temple carvings in the world. Some of the carvings also rival the Kama Sutra for creativity, so check it out!
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