India Trip Day 6 - Orchha

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We were lucky and had a second day in Orchha today. This meant that we were allowed a little bit of a sleep in and didn't have to meet up until 8:30am this morning. Our first stop of the morning was the Orchha palace where we had a local guide show us around the ruins. These ruins were really quite lovely and are about 400 years old. It was another place where you didn't really have to try to hard to visualise just how beautiful it would have been when it was new. The Hindus who lived in the royal palace had some beliefs that were quite similar to the muslims of the time in that they kept concubines, however these concubines were mostly only companions to the queen, and were not used for anything physical. But just like the muslim royal palaces the women had their own seperate area of the palace and men were not allowed in that area at all. The Orchha palaces also has a palace that took 22 years to build and when complete was only slept in for one night. This was because the palace was built as a gift for the Mughal emperor and when he finally came to visit he could only stay one night as he was on a journey to Lahore. And then this emperor died in Lahore a year later and since the Hindus believe that once a gift is given you cannot take it back again (which really confused me because we always use the saying of 'Indian Giving' which is the complete opposite of this!) this meant that the royal family could not use this palace and so it just sat there empty.

The palaces were really lovely and were decorate with some beautiful sculptures. Apparently if the trunk of an elephant is raised then it is means good luck, and if the trunk is down this means welcome.

After the palaces we had some free time so Robin and I decided to head off to look at the cenotaphs (tombs) that were directly behind our hotel. These looked really interestingm but much to our dismay we couldn't find our way into the courtyard. However after a little bush crashing we managed to find our way to one of the tombs and scrambled up to the third floor of it. The view from the top of this tomb was amazing. We could see right out over the river and so we sat down to admire the view for a little while. While we were there some Indian university students came up and started chatting to us. One of them had just applied to a college in Canada and so was asking Robin lots of questions. WHile we were there I said that the top of the tomb would be a great place to watch a thunder storm from, and what do you know but that 5 mintues later a thunderstorm had gathered and we watched as the fork lighting struck the hills around us and the thunder crashed over head. We decided to take shelter in the tomb when the rain started to pour down. It was actually a real blessing that it rained a bit today as it kept the temperature down. However the rain played havoc with the electricity and the power was out in the town for most of the day.

Tonight, after dinner at the Ram Raja restaurant (for the third time - it is listed in the lonely planet did you know) we went back to the royal palace as it was the final night of the festival of Rama and they were putting on the final night of a play about his life. It was just like symphoney under the stars with lots of color, really really loud singing in a language that you totally can't understand and half of the audience staring at you instead of at the stage.

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