Highway 44 Revisited - Orchha, Khajuraho and Pench

Orchha in the morning

There's no time for breakfast at Falguni Haveli when we leave, just as the sun rises over the fields. I'm still tired, not having slept well¹. Shabha insists we see more of Orchha fort, before heading out for Khajuraho. It's a good thing she does.
Orchha is magnificent.
The Gwalior fort may get more publicity, but it really is nothing compared to Orchha, which spans the whole town.
On the way from the Haveli to the town, we see a couple of ancient buildings. We decide to stop and take a look.

There's no one around for miles. There's just bird song. And as we walk towards the building, we start hearing the atonal chant of prayers at a nearby temple². The moon, still fresh from Holi poornima rides high and fat in the dawn sky. The buildings themselves are locked, but we have them all to ourselves. And these aren't even the main buildings that attract tourists.
That's the thing about Orchha. There are so many buildings here, so many that would be individual tourist attractions, but just... exist, homes to mynahs and magpies.

That doesn't mean that Orchha is a dead town. Far from it. It's a pilgrimage site, a temple town, and there are lines of devout at it its ancient/modern temple. And all the people making livings off devotion: the sellers of flowers and icons and camphor and pooja materials, the beggars and mendicants, with foreheads proclaiming their devotion in shades of white and vermilion or ash-grey, the vendors at the "sweet bhandars", tiny shops with their pyramid stacks of pedas, golden yellow, with almond or cashew centres, the makeshift restaurants serving breakfast to the faithful...and yet, there's a charm, a certain kind of magic about the whole place.

It's a pity that Debu had to chop his chin off to get more of the boarded up doorway

The fort itself, built by Raja Rudra Pratap Singh, is massive - complete with a natural moat - the Betwa and Jamni rivers perform this function. There are multiple palaces - the Raja Mahal, multiple temples, a Sheesh Mahal, and the Jahangir Mahal.
Wiki-ing says that the last was constructed specially for the Emperor Jahangir³ - who spent just one night there. It's pretty deserted at this time in the morning, though there are notices saying that there will be Orchha walks conducted by local residents later in the day.
According to the census, Orchha's population is less than 10,000 people. Which in a way is a good thing. The place is less commercialized than the normal Indian tourist trap. And there is a kind of sadness about the place, dreaming of past glories that no one else remembers, abandoned by its creators who moved on.

You needed to be there, though

Shobha and I breakfast, on delicious - and hot - puris. Bull and Debu have eaten the parathas packed by the people at Falguni Haveli, and we are on the road again.

The road to Khajuraho

Our next destination is Khajuraho, and on the way, at one of those village/town hybrids, we stop. Bull buys samosas from a cart. I buy smokes. The samosas are excellent. The cigarettes are terrible.
The car is is slowly filling up with the detritus of a long journey. Empty plastic bottles. Used napkins, bunched and stuffed in a bag.
In every road movie, you see shots of the car speeding along the highway, with the appropriate thumping soundtrack. But inside, it's different. After all, what's a car but a tiny room that can travel at 100kmph on highways. But despite it being a room where four people are stuck together for the better part of the day, there's no real tension.
The road takes us through Nowgong. It's a lovely old town, but hardly anyone seems to live there. The buildings are mostly old colonial. Debu and Bull talk about the army and it's presence in Nowgong. It appears that Nowgong was the headquarters of the British Bundelkhand Agency, and was, for a short period, the capital of Madhya Pradesh. Now it's a sleepy town, quieter than even Orchha, forgotten by time and history. The place has just one hotel listed. It makes you wonder if the Nowgong dodged a bullet, when you look back on the sprawl and clutter of places like Gwalior.
The road - this time it is NH39 Chhatrapur - named after Chhatrasal. There's a statue of a Rajput warrior on the eponymous horse in the middle of the town, and I flashback to an old Amar Chitra Katha on the warrior king - it had this magnificently mustached Rajput dressed in pink standing stonefaced in front of a holy man of some kind on its cover.
From Chhatrapur we turn at the town of Bamati and it takes us to Khajuraho. The airport looks nice and new, and barely used, rather like the toy airport in Dehra Dun. We park near the town centre, and I make my first non-essential purchase of the day, two old-fashioned junior edition clay chillums⁴.
It's still before noon, and the day is hot. We go to the gate of the temple complex, pay our entry fees, and employ a guide.  He's a little better than the Gwalior guide, but five times as expensive. He speaks in a sing-song as well, and does a slightly-more-exhaustive-than-Wikipedia version of the temple complex's history. But what strikes me is the fact that the temples were abandoned to the jungle centuries ago, and were "rediscovered" by a British officer in February 1838 (After being told by his palanquin bearer). Despite that, I wonder what it must have been like, cutting your way through the jungle and finding this magnificent series of monuments. Of course, TS Burt was a little ... surprised at the images⁵.
The sculptures are stunning, and our guide takes great pleasure in pointing out various coital positions depicted on the temple spires. "That is the 69 position. This, we call the 71 position. And that," he says, pointing to a relief of two women having sex with a single man, "isko kehte hain 'Buy one, get one free'".
Shobha is visibly unamused, but the rest of us can imagine honeymooning couples receiving this information, the man looking and laughing at the wit, and the woman, with her face down, tittering at the idea.
But there are interesting aspects - the matter-of-fact acceptance of bestiality is something that stands out, as well as the depiction of women with scorpions on their thighs. The scorpion⁶, explains our ASI certified guide, was an expression of high libido.
There are no men with scorpions on their thighs.

I'm sure I'll never think of horse riding quite the same way again

By this time, it's almost noon.
We pass another guide explaining the temple's architecture and history to a firang couple in fluent Spanish, and make our way back to the car.
Then Bull spots a chaat vendors cart.
As there is no force on earth that gets between a hungry Bull and his chaat, we go along. Debu and Shobha partake, but Bull will not rest until he has sampled every variety of the merchandise. And when we finally get into the car, it's past noon.

Panna in the evening

Bull is thirsty. He needs his beer⁷. We had seen a booze shop on the way to Khajuraho, but our way out took us another way. And I could feel Bull's vitality diminish by one point every minute he went without beer.
We hadn't been able to confirm our reservation at Panna until we were on the way to Khajuraho, but we finally did, and asked Rabindra(o)? to fix up lunch for us. We would be too late to make the evening safari, and as we would be leaving at dawn, as usual, there didn't seem to be much chance of any animal-spotting there.
There were a couple of families at Ken River Lodge, but they weren't staying overnight. Better still, they served beer.
You could see Bull visibly perk up, and he became steadily more garrulous as he got outside first one beer, then another.
I had buttermilk. 
Then I had some more.
And then the food came.
The food was good, and we found that the lodge also conducted "Boat Safaris". So we signed up for one, and went to our rooms.
Bull was beered up, but still thirsty, and made himself a cup of tea. I tried to sleep, but was in that strange place where tiredness tried to close my my eyes but adrenaline kept me awake. I tried to write something, but felt too lazy to. So I made my way to the restaurant, overlooking the river Ken, and propped my feet up and daydreamed until it was nearly time for the safari.
The word safari was quite the misnomer. It was just a boat ride, and the four of us got into a boat helmed by a taciturn boatman.

He wasn't exactly singing about the breeze during the monsoon months, nor was his heart dancing like a peacock in the forest

The sun was making its way down to the horizon, and there were birds everywhere. Debu kept asking the boatman if there was a possibility of seeing gharials - magarmach⁸, and the boatman would say very little in reply.
But there was something calming about the ride, with the river playing host to one other tourist boat, with a middle-aged couple9 in it, and a solitary fisherman plying his trade from a tire tube about a kilometre upstream.
Cormorants hover over the surface. On a small rocky outcrop, a kingfisher waits, before it darts down to the water. Lapwings abound, their croaking cries a counterpoint to the sound of the water.

The boatman rows to a rocky island in the middle of the river. We disembark, and he unpacks a basket. There is hot tea and there are biscuits. And it's there - that one perfect moment. The river, the setting sun, the twilight, the birdsong.

It may look blurry, but I quite like this picture

By now, the sun has almost set. The birds have fallen silent and the frogs are beginning their chorus. I stub the cigarette and pocket the butt, and we are back at Ken.

A lubricated Hari is a happy bovine

The hotel is empty, the visitors have left Rabindra is generous with information and service as we dine. The food is good and the Amrut is finished. Tomorrow, we head for Pench.

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1. The reason I haven't slept well is because I shared a room with bull, whose snores sound like a drunken lumberjack with a chainsaw has been unleashed in a casuarina grove. There are long abrasive buzzes, followed by short silences, snorts, and sharp cracking sounds. And there's no rhythm to them that you can get used to.
2. This is one of the abiding images of the trip that I will carry back with me, long after the trip - the memory of Orchha, stopping the car on the track, and walking up the rise, where the gentle orange of the morning sun lights up the ruins, and the sound of prayers far in the distance.
3. This must be the biggest example of ass-kissing ever done. The palace is magnificent, and must have taken years to build - which makes you wonder about the keeper of the Royal Calendar - who sends messengers to vassals saying that the emperor will be with you sometime next year - as per current information. But then, since Nur-ud-din Muhammad Salim was supposed to be a drunk and opium addict prone to fits of extreme violence, maybe brown-nosing was the sensible option.
4. I live in hope.
5. Quote from the 1839 issue of the Journal of the Asiatic Society "I found in the ruins of Khajrao seven large diwallas, or Hindoo temples, most beautifully and exquisitely carved as to workmanship, but the sculptor had at times allowed his subject to grow rather warmer than there was any absolute necessity for his doing; indeed, some of the sculptures here were extremely indecent and offensive." ... rather warmer, indeed.
6. Later, I discover that an alternate word of scorpion in Sanskrit is Kharjura, the same as the word for date palm. And while the local legends say that Khajuraho got its name from the date palms that covered the area, we did not see a single one. Maybe Khajuraho means the place of scorpions, and they laired on women's thighs.
7. Have you heard of the "Wizard needs food badly" trope? That's what I was reminded of, until Bull was able to get his beer.
8. Why magarmach? The etymology sounds fascinating. Is it short for magarmachli? "But, fish?" Did people think that a gharial - or any kind of crocodile was some kind of fish, but...? "But, mosquito" doesn't sound quite right. (That's what you get when someone whose hindi is rudimentary at best learns new words)