Kajuraho - India's erotic temples - December 1-3

2005-12-07T00:02:00.000-08:00

At 9 we arrive at Satna and are accosted by jeep drivers offering to drive us to Kajuraho for 1500 Ruppes. With Andrew, Karen and Gunther and Gisele (retired German travellers), we get them down to 1000, climb in and drive for 3 hours with a short meal break at a fencepost and tarp roadshide shack with the best rice pudding EVER. We get dropped at the Zen Guesthouse, check in and get a doctor for Beck who has had 4 perfectly round thumbtack sized infections appear on her right quadricep. She thinks it might be ringworm from something we ate in Varanasi. The doctor takes a short look and says it is a reaction to an insect bite, writes out a script for a cream and 4 medicies which we fill at the chemist next door.

We walk through the town which is reall a T intersection meeting where the famous temples are. Even here, in the smallest town we imagined we would visit in India, it is impossible to escape the touts. Apart from forcing you to ignore everyone you meet, it is a bit sad because it stops you from being able to make a true connection or have a real conversation with anyone because you know that no matter how sincere it seems, or how long you have been talking for, or how deep and meaningful you get, eventually the question "Do you want - to visit my friend's shop, catch a rickshaw, eat here, etc, etc". The only response is to ignor it, and the people doing it, which means just about everyone. It also creates the perception that all you are is a walking wallet. 2 examples - the first child to approach us when we walk out of our guesthouse assures us he doesn't want anything from us, only to practice his English and that he understands we have been approached constantly and he is not like that. He follows us for a while and eventually asks us what we want to buy. He is about 9. The next night, we sit with some local boys at a food stand for dinner, converse with them , even go to a meal for a weddin with them, and eventuall, inexorably, sadly inevitably, we are asked to go to one of their shops to look at Kashmir souvenirs. We agree and he transforms from the light hearted, frindly young man we have spent the evening with into the consummate salesman. We do buy somehting from him, but only after one of his friends who has also spent the evening with us makes it clear that he shouldn't rip us off. The price drops to a third of what it was. I understand the need to create income. I don't understand why what must be decades of the practice of trying to coerce westerners to buy in a way that at best must be successsful less than 1% of the time is still the only method used. Fortunately, Beck being the light she is, still manages to create some conections, and these are lovely.

We have dinner with the travellers we shared the jeep with an have an early night. I am sad at not having been able to call Jett as we were travelling. The next day we spend the morning at the main temple site. I could go on a fair bit about the incredible architecture and the Tantric and KamaSutra focus of the reliefs, but you would do better going to http://whc.unesco.org/pg.cfm?cid=31&id_site=240 Suffice it to say it is the most incredible example of large scale bas relief sculpture I have seen.

We hire bicycles and ride to th temples on the other side of town which are of a Jain style, rather plain both in and out of comparison to the others. Beck leads us on a trip through the old village where we get a glimpse of what real village life is like - delightful mudbrick, slate roofed houses butted together, children playing in courtyards between, baby goats being hugged by kids, elderly women gossipping in bright saris - and head back to town. We stop at the bus station and book our ticket for the next day's bus to Jhansi and find out, after being told by half the people we asked that there is a bus from Jhansi to Jaipur and the other half (including the local tourist office) that there isn't, that ther IS. We head back towards the town and on a whim, keep riding for half an hour through the countryside, getting a feeling of what it is like to have a truck overtake you while a tractor, motorcycle and biccle are coming the other way - an every 2 minute event on Indian roads but an adrenaliser for us.

That night, we meet the young men I mentioned earlier at a food stand. It is wonderful conversing with them about their everyday lives which are difficult, with requirements around family, study, livelihood and free choice that we don't have or understand. One mentions there is a wedding on tonight and we say we have always wanted to see one. He invites us and we hop on the back of their motorbikes for a 200m ride through a portico on a side road. We get off and walk into a courtyard where hundreds of people are eating from dozens of buffet containers along the walls with a square of men in the cebtre constntly making chapatis for the hungry crowd. We eat and are regularly approached by friends of Rajeesh who brought us whose are are glued to Rebecca and share a few sentences with her and a look with Rajeesh that shows he has earned huge kudos cool points for bringing this blonde western goddess to the wedding. I of course may as well not exist. After eating, Rajeesh leds us out as if it was a free buffet for the whols town. We ask when the rest of the ceremony will be as we wan to see it. He says an Indian wedding goes ll night. The buffet first, then the ceremony around midnight and celebrations to morning. It is now only 9pm.

The other youth, Waseem, invites us to the Kash,ir boutique he works at and I feel obliged to go. hen we get there it is a full on sales pitch. Rajeesh makes it clear that he is not to rip us off and the price for the shawl Beck wants to cover her hair ond chest to try and ward off the stares, which we have seen many western women wear, goes from 400 Rupees to 150. We headback to the guesthouse and 2 blocks away we hear loud music like a psycho Mr Whippy van. It is the groom, on a horse, a shawl covering the top half of his body so he can't see, and a van with a manic synthesizer player in front of him, coming down a side strett. Between the horse and the van, a dozen men, friends and family of the groom, dance in a frenzy that would make St Vitus look tame. Around the whole procession are young boys carrying wooden frames connected by electrical wiring to power the coloured globes on the outside of the frame and the fluorescent tubes inside. The procession is followed by 2 boys pushing a cart o which the generator noisily powering the light frames sits. They move onto the main street, down to the T intersection and back, the same electronic tune playing for the next 2 hours, fireworks, crackers and bungers constantly going off. At 11 we head to bed, listening for the next hour to the cacophony until it reaches the wedding site at midnight and the ceremonies begin.

The next morning I go to meet Kalishad, a young man I met on the street whilst watching the groom's procession the night before and sensed something a bit different about from the usual "what can I get from this westerner" mentality. His family imports, exports and wholesales Indian artworks. Over the next 40 minutes, he expounds his philosophies about life, people and living - that life is about people and experiences, not money; that he travels in India as often as he can to see what his world looks like, talk to the people and lean from them; that he wants to marry for love, not the arrnged marriage his family wants; he wants to marry a non-Indian as he needs someone who is prepared to explore the way the different people's of the world think, not be bound by the traditions of his country and its religion; how he goes to villages once a month and cooks for the elderly poor there, making tents and beds for them in exchange for them sharing their wisdom (he says that we are born naked and will die naked and that the only thing that will live on beyond us is the experiences we ahve shared and pass on to those who remain behind); he responds to my comment that I am also an experience collector, however I find that I have difficulty finding peace, a calmness in everyday life, with that he finds peace in meditation and that if I stayed another 2 days he would show me how to find peace (unfortunately we leave that morning) and more. Much wisdom for a 21 year old.

Rajeesh and his friends from last night have come to the bus station to see us off. There is such a huge difference between the small towns and large cities. I think we will be spending more time in them than we originally had planned.

Back to The Wayne's World Home Page

Back to India index

For REAL adventure, try a RedBalloon Day

Kajuraho - India's erotic temples December 1-3

Kajuraho - India's erotic temples - December 1-3