Khajuraho and the Karma Sutra Temples

As Malachy just pointed out this title sounds like an Indiana Jones film, and that is indeed the era the town capitulates you into.

But let’s update you to our arrival. Firstly we began our journey by breakfasting on our hotel rooftop restaurant. The food was crap but this was far out weighed by the priceless view of the sunrise slowly illuminating the Taj Mahal. After a death defying auto rickshaw ride across town we had a lovely train from Agra to Jhansi. Our train was delayed; therefore we missed our express bus connection to Khajuraho, which meant we had the pleasure of spending a few hours in Jhansi.

To describe Jhansi, let me first tell you about Ireland’s annual ‘Tidy Town’ competition. For this competition committees are often established in each entered town to ensure that they have a serious chance of winning this prestigious prize. Now Jhansi bus station, hum, if you could imagine the exact opposite to the Tidy Towns competition, say a ‘most horrendously disgusting putrid hole’ competition, we’re pretty certain that Jhansi, could win hands down. The people definitely contribute with a vigour any Tidy Town Committee member would envy. An example of how you too could be a winner in this town would be to drop your pants and squat down just about anywhere, but preferably near a food stall or open bus door/window and relieve yourself. I chose the unorthodox method of using the public toilets- for a fee I might add- and came out with no less then five mosquito bites on my rear end- a rupee for every bite!

We met Johanna and Anders in Jhansi (from sterile Sweden) who told us of their first few days in India. They apparently kept themselves occupied with projectile vomiting and dihorrea (thanks Korea for helping us build up our immune systems over the last three years, so far so good)!
Our bus to Khajuraho was over crowded. By more than double. More than triple. A lot more. We had seats- this was very, very good.
We arrived five and a half hours later to a warm welcome from the touts. We actually booked into a nice hotel, the room was huge, clean and the cheapest so far in India. Already Khajuraho was looking good to us.

As I mentioned earlier, exploring Khajuraho brings you back to another era. The streets are huge colonial events with lots of nice looking restaurants and cafés. The town and its people is the quietest we’ve come across thus far and seems to run solely on tourism, but unlike Agra, the money appears to have filtered down to even the outcasts. While there are still cows roaming free on the streets, leaving their messes everywhere and touts swarming around worse than the mosquitoes, the town still looks like a town, rather then a swampy leprosy jail.
There are three sets of the famous erotic temples, only one of which you have to pay an entrance fee for (20r Indians, 300r foreigners). These are definitely worth a visit, we highly recommend them. This group of Western temples are situated on amazingly well kept, beautifully hand-cut grass. Once entering onto the grounds an amazing sense of tranquillity abounds. The vast space and cleanliness seems paradoxical to the India beyond the entrance gates. I had this same sensation on entering the Taj Mahal, but the great concentration of tourists didn’t make the point so obvious at the time. We strolled leisurely around the temples and grounds for hours. The craftsmanship of the stonework decorating the temples is superb. Many facets of life- real or imaginary- are depicted from thousands of years before, the most entertaining being the erotic pieces. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves here!
We stayed in Khajuraho a total of three days, spending many an hour enjoying the culinary delights of Raja’s Café, a Swiss owned restaurant that had the most amazing Indian food we’ve ever tasted, actually the foreign food was pretty good also, all as cheap as chips!
After a lot of misguided/falsified information we finally got a bus from Khajuraho to Satna, rather than the direct route to Varanasi (huge thanks Anna and Robin for the tip on not taking the hell bus for 12-15 hours straight). From Satna it was an overnight train (delayed by four hours due to unrest in the Bihar region) which delivered us to Varanasi-a city we were somewhat apprehensive about visiting due to many a travellers tale, especially our two Swedish friends who told us pale faced over dinner that they would be giving the place a wide berth!

Sights: 10/10 Tourist facilities: 5/10 City: 6/10