The Temples of Khajuraho
My first destination after Delhi was Khajuraho, a small town that has built up around the Hindu and Jain temples famed for depicting erotic poses.
I arrived groggily by train at 7am and ten minutes after awakening, I was standing outside the station with at least five tuk tuk drivers all hounding me to take me on the 7km journey into town. The hostel allowed me early check-in and I promptly had a much needed shower.
As I went out into town for my standard walkabout to get to know the place, I was befriended by three young men, somewhere in the range of 15-25 years old. The youngest was first and generally hung around outside my hostel, he’d attempt to make conversation every time I stepped outside during my four days stay.
These characters claimed not to want to sell me anything, they just wanted to chat to improve their English. This sounded innocent enough, but I had come off a rough night’s sleep on the train and just wanted to walk around and take the town in, a fact that no-one seemed to understand.
The first two guys had offered me rides on the back of their motorbikes, I wouldn’t have to pay them anything except for the fuel. I declined this lovely offer on the basis that I was wearing linen trousers and a cotton shirt and had no helmet to speak of.
Talking later with other tourists from the hostel, I discovered that often this offer was made and the rider would take out their new friend to see the distant waterfalls, temples or mountains and threaten to leave them there unless they handed over some cash.
I am starting to understand from conversations with other tourists and hoteliers that people don’t have any moral issues with what they are doing, this is just a way to make a living.
Delhi Belly
In my preparations for this trip, one of the worst things I could imagine was becoming extremely ill. I took every effort to prevent sickness: I took a cholera vaccination, bought a filter for the tube of my hydration pack and have stuck to eating only vegetarian food.
Even with all this, something managed to defeat my defence. In retrospect, it seems like it was caused by eating the meals they serve on the train. The dinner comes in a sealed unit, but includes rice which may have been re-heated. Other people I’ve spoken with have insisted the train food shouldn’t be eaten, and one other had got sick after eating it.
The result was that for the full second day in Khajuraho, I was bed-bound and for the next week, I didn’t feel up to doing much at all. I had become all too familiar with my personal temple and its throne. Even my new friends outside the hostel noticed my absence when I slowly made my way out to look at temples the following day.
Temples
All the temples followed the same design, with some being much bigger than others and having extended annexes and entrances. You have to pay to view the western group of temples, which has lovely maintained grounds. I would recommend wearing footwear that is easy to remove as you must enter the temples with bare feet.
I had trainers on and after taking them off to go inside three of the dozen or so temples, I admit to not wanting to go into the rest because of the faff of taking them off. Plus it was raining meaning my shoes were slowly becoming sodden each time I returned to them from a temple.
After a while of wandering about, I headed out of the area and was instantly bombarded by more people offering tuk tuk rides, taxis, motorbikes and shop owners asking me to come check out their wares. “Only look, no buy,” as their mantra goes.