Temples, Tigers, and Tree houses

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Sometimes, all the stars align, and really amazing days come together to form the illusive "relaxing weekend trip." In India, "relaxing" and travel seldom go together. The little stresses of late trains, dirty roads, greasy street food, haggling over prices, and unexpected delays can make small trips easy to talk yourself out of doing. Luckily, there is a whole new group of international students here for the semester with fresh and excited travel appetites for this country that I now have a small idea of how to get around. So, I am borrowing some of their enthusiasm and they are using a bit of my knowledge of travel here. The two sides came together to form a really wonderful weekend trip.

We started out late Thursday night. Eiad and I shared our now ceremonial pre-trip dinner of chicken from Alkauzer, this time not opting to do any cooking ourselves. I met Katha (from Austria), Lene, and Jorgen (both from Norway) at 9:30pm and we got an auto to the train station. We opted for the overnight train so we could sleep most of the way there. Our train took us from Delhi to Jhansi, arriving at 5am where we then had to catch the 5hr bus ride to Khujaraho. The train ride was very cold but we all brought blankets and managed to sleep most of the time in our second class sleeper bunks.

We arrived in Khujaraho around noon. We new there would be a considerable number of hotel offers from eager employees at the bus station so we consulted the travel bible (aka, Lonely Planet India) to find a map of the town on the bus. Turns out Khujaraho is a very small town and you can walk about anywhere. So, we walked to town and dodged into a nearby restaurant for lunch and to loose the many eager advertisers. We had a really nice relaxing lunch at the "Lakeside Restaurant." The only thing negative I could say about the place was that the lake view wasn’t so good. Turns out it hadn’t rained but once all year, so the lake was reduced to little more than a large green puddle in a dry crater....global warming:(

After lunch we found a very nice hotel only a few doors down then headed straight for the temples. Khujaraho is most famous for these 20 or so temples that feature tantric statues carved into the facade. A little known fact is that the tantric statues are only a small portion of all of the carvings of daily life, love, and Hindu Gods. The carvings really are amazing. You can see some of the them in the photos with this entry, but there were statues of every imaginable thing. The stonecarvers did self portraits, chisels in hand. There were scenes of a woman picking up her baby, lovers hugging, a woman writing a letter, even a person with a thorn in their foot trying to get a friend to remove it. Of course, after awhile, you can’t take it all in, but it was amazing to just wander among the stone art for a few hours.

We had dinner at the "Blue Sky Restaurant" which we later found out was affiliated with our hotel. The extensive menus of these small restaurants are really amazing. They cater to all of the different tourist crowds with Indian, Korean, Chinese, Italian, and Israeli foods. We ordered a variety of the Indian including eggplant curry, vegetable pulao (rice), garlic naan, cashew naan, roti, garlic and ginger chicken, and vegetables with cashews. dishes and shared the feast over some Indian "Kingfisher" beers on the upper patio of the building. We weren’t quite ready for bed after that so we moved a little further down the street to another restaurant for flambeed bananas and another drink.I never knew that discussing world politics, history, geography, and pickled Norwegian herring would be so fun:)

For the next day, we reserved a jeep to take us to the Panna National Park about 15km away. We had to leave the hotel at 5:30am which made the second day in a row we all got up around 5am. Heck of a weekend vacation huh?

After about 15 minutes driving through the "jungle" (not like you would picture, "jungle" is just the hindi word for "woods"),the first animals we saw, deer, reminded me very much of home with our herd that rambles through the back yard of Pleasant Hill (the name of my house in New Harmony.) These had white spots as adults, though, where ours only have them as babies. The next sites were of native birds and plants. The big events of the day were when we got to meet the elephants that the park uses to follow the tigers into the jungle. The mother was 58 and has worked at the park for a very long time. Her "baby" followed. He is 7 years old and probably 8ft tall. Big baby. We got to sit on the mother and pet her trunk which was really amazing. Such a big animal seems so intimidating, but she was so gentle.

The next event was the dream of every tourist at this park....to see a tiger. The park has about 35 tigers at present, but it still takes some luck, and a fast driver to spot one from the road. We only saw our tigers for a moment, but it was still amazing to see that strong, lengthy tail disappearing into the grasses, imagining what he is after. You find the tigers by the sounds the other animals make in warning of the approaching predator. The monkeys and the deer call to each other to warn of a tigers approach. If you can follow the calls fast enough you may get to see one. If you are very lucky, and one of the elephants is near by, then you hop from your jeep to the back of your trusty pachyderm and try to follow the tiger into the woods for a look at him in the jungle. (The cost to get into the park is 500rp, the cost to use the elephant to get into the jungle is 600rp. Capitalizing on urgent necessity is good money.)

After the tigers we found a group of monkeys that appeared to be watching the sunrise from their tree tops. They were all sitting in the tree with their faces lit up my the morning sun, then one by one they jumped down to watch us from the rocks as we watched them from the jeep. I actually enjoyed that more than the tiger because we were able to sit for some time and just observe.

Our last stop was the river for a look at the crocodiles that usually sun bathe there, but it was too early and the rocks weren’t warm enough to lure them out of the water yet. So, we enjoyed the view, snapped a few last photos, and headed back towards town. We decided to stop at a little, out of the way resort for breakfast that boasted a tree house dining area 60ft in the air. Indeed, they had built a platform into the tree tops to enjoy the quiet of the country and watch the river in the distance. We were the only ones there so we just enjoyed our breakfast of eggs and toast in quiet. At home the silence might have bothered me, prompting me to start some mundane conversation. After living in Delhi for so long, the silence is a welcome retreat for the senses that we all relished without explanation.

The rest of the afternoon was spent relaxing in Khujaraho. We took turns showering in the common bathroom that had hot water. I walked through the fruit gardens behind the hotel and the owner treated us to chai and a fresh-picked papaya on the roof. Jorgen was kind enough to tolerate us girls shopping while I picked out a new sari and some earrings.

For dinner we actually took-in our second tree house meal of the day. We went back to the "Blue Sky" for our second night, this time having reserved their one tree-top table. Metal poles and a web of boards support a large nest that holds one table about 2 stories up a large tree. The thatched roof and wood-plank bridge from the roof to the table made me feel like part of the Swiss Family Robinson, though none else knew who that was. We enjoyed a glutenous amount of Indian food  & then pulling our string that led to a bell in the kitchen whenever we needed something. This caused the waiter to rush up the three flights of stairs to our little perch. Of course, a setting like that one lends itself to amazing conversation, so we sat long after the meal was over.

We reluctantly left the next morning to catch our bus to Orccha, a small town on the way back to the train station in Jhansi. The city had been recommended by several friends, but we really didn’t have many expectations for such a small town. As is often the case with low expectations, they were exceeded to an astonishing degree. The town is small, but boasts a bustling market street with the normal fruit and vegetable sellers, tourists trinkets, and a more than average number of sweets shops. There is a large temple just inside the ancient city gates were people have boxes of sweets blessed and give them to friends or even put a small amount on their car hoods or motorcycles for blessings of safety.

We found a hotel to leave our bags at and just spent the day exploring the amazing number of 16^th century ruins of palaces and "temples" that looked more like the vaulted ceiling caverns of Europe than the Hindu temples I am used to seeing here. The old palace was built in 1531 and still had intact the original blue tiles, giving you a brief glimpse of what this place may have looked like in it’s heyday.

The second building we enjoyed was the old temple. Upon arrival, a young indian man asked if we wanted to go to "the top." We said yes, not knowing what that would really entail. He led us up steep 2ft wide, narrow stairways recessed into the walls, where we could peek out onto balconies just big enough for one person to perch looking down into the massive worship area below. The guide said that these little nests used to house drummers for worship ceremonies. Since the balconies were just at the base of the dome, the sounds would have carried and reverberated in a way I can only imagine.

We continued our tour by creeping higher and higher through tiny, 3ft tall doorways and climbing up unlit stairs into the tall spires of the building. At points we were actually crawling to look out of windows just big enough for a face to fit. From below, I imagine even our pale white skin wouldn't’t have been easily visible against the huge, decorative facades of these buildings. I called it "temple spelunking" which I think is a pretty accurate description of the experience.

The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering the few, small streets of the market and sitting at cafe’s enjoying the busy little town. In the evening we bought a fresh papaya and a variety of the sweets and did a comparative tasting. All of the sweets here are very, very sweet, but there are subtle differences in texture and flavor. Some are milk based, some have cashews or ground almonds added, some just taste like pure sugar and butter. They were all too sweet, but we did find our favorites among them.

We left Orccha by auto around 8pm to go to Jhansi and catch our train back to Delhi. The train was an hour late so we had time to just sit at the station watching the people as they watched us. It reminded me a bit of the experience with the monkeys in the park. Neither party really knowing what to make of the other.

There was one family in particular that plunked their heavy burlap bags down in front of us to wait for their train. There were two children, both skinny as rails and clinging to a thin sheet that could not really be qualified as a blanket & with worn edges and holes in it. The girl was wearing a thin cotton dress that only came to her knees and sandals. They were both, obviously very cold, as we sat there in layers of fleeces, jeans, and hats. Lene had one blanket with her that she said she could do without so we sat and debated whether to offer it to them. In the end Lene gave it to me, and I took it over to the mother. In my broken Hindi I just said that it is very cold and pointed to the kids, asking "teek hai?" which is like "ok?." She nodded a yes, and smiled but the children seemed less happy and a bit more embarrassed, holding the folded blanket in their laps. We didn’t want to embarrass them, but we hope the dent in their pride is better that than freezing. I hope.

The train ride home was like trying to sleep in a refrigerator with a slight breeze coming through the cracks and the windows that didn’t close all of the way. We arrived back in Delhi on little sleep at about 6am and went our separate ways to find our beds before having to wake-up a few hours later to attend classes. It was really a wonderful weekend though. Good people, good weather, great towns....it’s the epitome of what these trips can be. Enjoy the photos and as always, your comments are welcome.