Blogs from Madhya Pradesh, India, Asia - page 7

First things first:I made horrible spelling mistakes in my blog yesterday. The name of the Temple is Chaturbhuj and the cenotaphs are the Chhatris. Are you supposed to sleep in Sleeper Class? Because I didn't. The train left Jhansi at 2:30 and reached Kajuraho at 6:30. I maybe managed an hour of sleep (that's 3 times 20 minutes). Indians must be very deep sleepers because I was the only one bothered by the little kid on the lower berth jumping up and down screaming something over and over. The others just kept on snoring. I hope my sleeper class experience tomorrow will be better. I arrived at Khajuraho in a very bad mood. Any wannabe driver/guide/hotel suggestion/restaurant suggestion would have to face my wrath and feel the pain. I decided to blow some steam on a ... read more

My last night in Agra was like the first: loud, mostly sleepless, power outage, hot and humid. Glad to leave and discover new things. Again the Shatabdi Express in the morning. Destination Gwalior. I had a nice seat in a well-ACed car. I got distracted from my reading by the sudden change in landscape. The usual rice fields had given way to a hilly succesion of gorges and valleys with peaks distrubed only on the horizon by brick-oven smokestacks. It was like a 1:1000 scale model of the Himalayas. It was carpeted here and there by fields that could only be harvested by hand. A little hut here, a cow there and the wilderness in between. Your first impression of a city over here happens when you're assaulted by rickshaw drivers at the station. Also, it ... read more

I’ve always thought about myself as a city person. In countryside I feel a bit out of place and have no idea what to do apart from, well, observing the countryside and being a little scared. In a city I function, cities for me mean people and the best things the people managed to produce: beautiful buildings, nice parks, theatres, museums, palaces, universities, quirky things of different kinds, bookshops, restaurants, etc, etc. I am not scared of crowds and can easily get lost in one, being amongst hundreds of people and spend the whole day without saying a word to anyone and feeling alone. People who don’t like cities often argue that it’s not nice to start your day from struggling to get on a bus or tube, that there is no fresh air and that ... read more

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KHAJURAHO, MADHYA PRADESH, INDIA. Monday 2 April, 2012. After a good nights sleep in the Taj Hotel we were collected by yet another guide at 8.00 am. Our destination today was the resplendent Hindu temples of Khajuraho. These have been immaculately restored after almost a millennium of neglect and abandonment and are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. These temples are famed for the delicate sensuality, forthright eroticism, and everyday detail of the sculptures that decorate the facades of the temples. They were built between the 10th and 12th centuries AD and have been hailed as the greatest architectural achievement of the Chandella Dynasty. By the 16th century the temples had fallen out of use and were engulfed by the surrounding jungle, until the British 'rediscovered' them in 1838. Although it appears to be fairly accessible ... read more