Jhansi and Orchha

Monday 17 January 2000

We arrived into Jhansi late at night and found a basic hotel room with mercifully hot water and, luxury of all luxuries, CNN.  We were heading for Orchha, a relatively small village set among a wonderful complex of well-preserved palaces and temples, so the next morning hired a tuk-tuk to drive us.  We had read that it was a peaceful and relaxing place to spend a couple of days and, feeling in need of some rest, decided to stop here to enjoy the peace and quiet, together with some decent food and accommodation.

We opted for a room in the government run hotel (a converted part of the old palace) and, feeling in need of some creature comforts, decided on their Royal Apartment.  Perhaps luxurious in years gone by, it now was tired and worn.   But at least it was peaceful, and we spent a leisurely day sightseeing around the palace grounds and climbing up onto the old ramparts for spectacular views of the town and temples.

Khajuraho

Tuesday 18 January – Thursday 20 January 2000

We left Orchha and headed back to Jhansi to catch a local bus to Khajuraho, one of India’s major attractions.  Once a great capital, Khajuraho is now a small town and despite all the tourist attention, it is actually a relatively pleasant place.

Only around 20 temples now remain of the 85 that were originally built here between 950 and 1050 AD.  They were discovered by the British in 1840 amid dense jungle, but restoration only began to take place in the early part of the 20th century.  The temples of Khajuraho, like many of the temples across India, are a synthesis of architecture and sculpture, but what makes them different is the profusion of stone carvings that incorporate women and sex.  Many aspects appear in the artistic stonework – gods, goddesses, warriors, musicians, animals – but these two elements appear over and over again.  Stone figures of apsaras (celestial maidens) appear on every temple striking the kinds of poses we now associate with pin-up models.  

There are two principle groups of temples:  the western group is the main collection of temples contained within a fenced enclosure that has been landscaped as a park; and the eastern group is scattered through the old village on the other side of town, where there is also another walled enclosure containing some interesting Jain temples.  Khajuraho’s most impressive temple is the Kandariyamahadeva, built in honour of the god Shiva and based on the shape of a cross.

It was an interesting, adult-only experience wandering through these temple-complexes, built in the middle of nowhere atop sandy plains.  There is significant speculation surrounding why they were built here and about the subject matter, none of it very conclusive.  A bit of a mystery, really.  But if nothing else, they present exceptional examples of sandstone Indo-Aryan architecture and sculpture and were definitely well worth the visit.  Perhaps this was what attracted the  profusion of Japanese tourists, so rarely encountered elsewhere in India; their zoom lenses were getting quite a workout.