Days 37-39 : Khajuraho and my first Safari
Trip Start
Sep 29, 2009
1
34
51
Trip End
Mar 27, 2010
Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh, India
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Left Varanasi by train and arrived in Satna by 7pm where a driver was waiting to pick me up and take me to Khajuraho 2.5hrs away.
Checked into my hotel and went out for a fairly decent Italian dinner. Back at the hotel I managed to get myself on a Safari starting at 5am in the morning sharing a jeep with a French couple from another hotel. Result! It would have been far too expensive to do on my own!
05/11/09
4 hours of sleep and by 5.30 I was picked up by the jeep and I met Nicholas and his wife Orillia?
They were a nice couple and friendly people. We reached the park after a chai stop about an hour and a half later where we picked up our guide R.K. Within minutes of driving into the park we saw 2 or 3 wild dogs (wolves?) running away from us on the dirt road. Apparently none were seen at all last year so it was a great start. We were told there are only 2 female tigers in the whole park (543 sq km's) and about thirty something leopards which are naturally very shy and hard to spot so I wasn't holding much hope of seeing any big cats. We saw several types of deer and birds, peahens (as opposed to peacocks), wild boar, dirty great big spiders and their webs. Around 9.30 we stopped at the Ken river and after a while of sitting spotted a crocodile in the water a fair way off. We heard some barking sounds which R.K. said were warning calls of the deer and he had a suspicion a Leopard may be nearby. We followed him along the rocky bank of the river past where we were actually allowed to go and all of a sudden R.K. excitedly pointed to the river bank a few hundred meters up on a bend. It took us a while to see anything but we soon spotted a leopard. It was only for a minute or so but was enough to top off the safari. Awesome!
We headed back to the jeep and showed the other people (that had left the river bank about 2 minutes before) our blurry pictures before heading out of the park which itself was great just for the landscapes.
Our driver then took us to a waterfall area a few kilometers away. We weren't expecting much but it was actually a beautiful place. A small waterfall cascading into a fairly large lake of water which contained fish. On one side a cliff face which had some stone built rooms, this was another place claimed to have been visited by the Pandavas who stayed in a cave in the cliff face. One of the trees had claw marks all over it which we were told was made by bears climbing up to the bees nest high up in the tree. We also managed to spot a turtle swimming in the lake (it was actually quite comical to watch).
We then went on to see a couple of the Khajuraho temples in the 'southern group', on the way spotting a deadly lizard on the road which I managed to scare away before any of us could get a decent picture... whoops! The temples were fairly nice but we were too tired and hot at this point to appreciate them.
Khajuraho is a fairly quiet town although walking down the road from my hotel never failed to get me attention from the English speaking locals. The small town lives off whatever tourism there is and you know for a fact that whoever talks to you is looking for a way of making money... directly or indirectly!
06/11/09
Went to see the main Khajuraho temples today in the 'western group'. The 7/8 temples are set within a half square kilometer of manicured gardens. The temples themselves look awe-inspiring but it's the detail in the work up close that leaves its impression... obviously the shocking sexual poses are the most memorable... and in particular the one of a man sodomising a horse leaves nothing to the imagination. I'll let the pictures tell a thousand words...
After leaving the site, I stopped in the cafe opposite for a refreshing nimboo pani and then killed a few hours in an Internet cafe.
On the way out I thought I'd treat myself to an ayurvedic massage as I had seen a few signs around. I asked the shopkeeper of an artist shop and after seeing if I was interested in buying anything, made a couple of calls and arranged the massage for me. The stuff in his shop was pretty good so I promised him I'd be back in the morning before leaving to have a closer look.
Had a relaxing massage followed by an average dinner before heading to bed.
07/11/09
As promised I went to the artist shop after breakfast. Dinesh Singh (a Rajasthani artist) was actually working on a piece as I came in. Much of his work is copies of the explicit Khajuraho sculptures but I found 6 pieces of work I loved which were painted on black velvet. Negotiated a price we were both ok with before leaving for the 4 hour car journey to Jhansi to catch my train.
