Palaces and Paintings
Trip Start
Jun 28, 2007
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10
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Trip End
Jul 28, 2007
Orchha, Madhya Pradesh, India
Monday, July 16, 2007
This morning brought an early start as we set out with some trepidation to catch the bus - another bus! - to Jhansi from Khajuraho. After what was, ultimately and thankfully, a fairly uneventful journey (bar the necessary selection of bodily fluids, unexpected showers and armpit intimacies), we found ourselves at Jhansi bus station with a lovely Danish couple, all four of us bound for the train station. Having deposited our bags, and our Danes, we haggled our way by slowwww autorickshaw to Orchha.
A quick and slightly unsatisfying lunch had to suffice for sustenance, and we headed for the palaces. Orchha was a capital of the great Rajput kingdom of the Bundela rajas, and its jungly riverbanks are littered with elegantly decaying palaces, fortresses and temples. We were shown round the main palaces by two guides, one a middle-aged chap, the other a 15-year-old-girl, both equally amazed by our tales of expensive bottles of mineral water in the UK. The buildings themselves were heart-wrendingly beautiful, with the massive Jahangir Mahal dripping in turrets, ornaments, and stone lattices - built as the one night stop-over of the Moghul emperor after who it is named. Its neighbour, the Raj Mahal, seems almost ordinary by comparison, except for its ceilings, which were covered with stunning painted friezes of battle scenes and courtly culture, and in many places remain remarkably well-preserved.
The evening was spent in relative luxury at the Raja's country retreat, now a hotel within the palace complex. We were escorted away through the night by a taxi (limousine, we imagined) back to Jhansi train station and reality, where we write now, facing a three-hour (we hope) wait for the first of a few trains which will take us to Udaipur via Jaipur, and into the Rajasthan leg of our journey. Wish us luck.
Comments
From leics.
It all sounds so beautiful, and I can't wait to hear more about these fantstic 21 hour bus/train/sedan chair journeys. Stay dry!
a
Missing you madly
Actually almost forgot you weren't around and nearly texted Claire when I found some fabulous shoes (you would have loved them, dear.)
Still sounds incredible over there, keep up the tales!
Willa B
hello
Sorry not to have been in touch at all - am missing you very much but came over all meek, like a mouse, and didn't know what to say!
Your journey so far sounds amazing - I'm very jealous although also positive that I would have passed out from the heat at least 10 billion times by now - I'm exhausted just reading about it!
Am having a great time in big bad London although it rains and it rains and when the monsoons contrive to leave me stranded at a train station it is not in some interesting and exotic location but in Slough... enough said I think!
I keep seeing mice on the Tube lines so at least am amongst my own kind...
Love you xxxxxxxxx