Khajuraho

The plan was to go for three nights over new year to visit the temples at Khajuraho, famous for their erotic carvings! What was originally going to be Sarah and me had burgeoned to include Daniel, Emma, Paige and Dr Chatterjee, all from the orphanage where Sarah works. The four others would be coming with a car from Gwalior, and meet Sarah and me there. As Sarah decided late in the day to come via Allahabad we couldn't get a ticket on the right day so we planned to travel a day earlier and stay in Satna, where we had to change from train to bus, or continue on for an extra night in Khajuraho if we could make the connection. In the end our train was four hours late in departing so we were stuck in Satna for the night, a town who's lonely planet entry consists solely of how to get from the train station to the bus station.

We wandered around near the station for a while, after swatting away the initial swarm of touts, but there was not much sign of any hotels or restaurants. So we got an auto-rickshaw to a hotel we'd heard the name of, which turned out to have room, and be a bit cheap and cheerful (bedding would have been nice). The next day we were offered a very cheap rate for a car to Khujaraho by a driver from there who was returning after having dropped tourists off in Satna. We took him up as the bus journey was reputedly the worst one in India. Thus we arrived in Khajuraho around lunchtime on Sunday, where Sarah had to renegotiate out booking and rate due to the lax Indian approach to what a booking means.

We went for lunch in an Italian restaurant which had real pizza with (gasp) real cheese! We ended up back there many time over the next few days. Sarah and I headed to a local art and craft museum before the others arrived, saving the temples for a large group visit. When they did arrive we headed out for Chai and there was much talk of Orphanage politics. A putative ban on such talk in the following few days was not enforced!

On New Years Eve we went to see the main temple site in the morning. These were pretty amazing. They were built by the chandelas around 1000 years ago and feature many carving of dancing women as well as some more "non-veg" (as the Indians say) carvings. There is no proper explanation about why the carvings are there, especially the one of a man sodomising a horse! I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, I may add more in a gallery later. In the afternoon Sarah, Danial and I walked out to see some of the more outlying temples: Jain temples this time, but with similar carvings.

Before dinner some of us went to see the sound and light show at the temples. Not that great really but something different to see. The highlight was the supposed voice of the British officer rediscovering the temples, good god man!

After dinner in the Pizza place again we wondered what to do for "the bells". The fancier hotels out of town would have bars, and one supposedly had a disco, going by the rock'n'roll name "Downing Street". In the end we went to a nearby hotel for a few drinks, where it was interesting to see the expressions that crossed Sarah's face after she tried downing some dodgy Indian Rum. We could see that the party was more jumping across the road at... the pizza place again, where they had a sound system and people were dancing. We headed over there again with less that an hour to the new year. The dancing had stalled a little and Sarah made a valiant effort to get things going again, with moves David Brent would be proud of. Dr Daniel was then enticed up by some Indian men, and then I was dragged up to by an Indian man who kept hugging me (did I mention that many men told we that a had a nice goatee (or French cut as they sometimes called it) over those few days - no where else we have been has had this fascination with beards). Eventually everyone had been up for a dance. You can see Dr C and Dr D in the photo. We didn't last that long after midnight, and any plans to make it to the British New Year as well were abandoned.