Central India

Here's a post from Mark - 

The three weeks since NYE have been largely been spent touring through Central India from Agra to Mumbai searching out some of Indias most famous ancient monuments and trying to flee the plunging Winter temperatures of the North.  It has been an interesting though exhausting trip, with whole days spent on some combination of taxi, bus, train, train, bus, taxi, bus between our stops, and 100km trips stretching on up to 10 hours.  But in between we’ve seen the whole breath of Indian history in this region which almost every great Indian civilization held at some point. 

First up were the Mogul forts at Agra and the ancient Mogul capital at Fatepuhr Sikri, both were replete with mosques,  palaces, gardens and harems for up to 5000 women.  Next up were the ruined palaces and temples of a Hindu prince at Orcha, a tiny garden filled island in one of North India’s (many) sacred rivers, which resisted the Moguls for some decades before finally falling to their armies.  This will stand out in our memories though, for its raucous NYE festival celebrating Rama the King, and for the consequent crowds of Indian country town teens chasing us around trying to get photos of us tourists. 

Next up were the erotic temples at Kujarhoo, an interesting juxtaposition of ancient erotica and modern Indian social mores.  Lets just say that the seemingly all male population here were a little sexually frustrated, surrounded as they were by carvings of every conceivable sexual position and proclivity (several of which required quite a bit of imagination to figure out what was going on, and how this was physically possible at all) but not able to so much as hold hands with a local girl.  You haven’t lived till a 14 year old boy chases you down the street trying to sell you copies of the karma sutra.

Next up were the oldest Buddhist structures in India at Sanchi, where the great emperor Ashoka covered a hill in Buddhist stupas following his conversion as a penance for his bloodthirsty conquests.  Then it was bus, bus, hike up to the cave paintings at Bhimbetka, where the original Indian people lived among the rock caves and filled them with remarkable paintings showing their lives.

Heading further South we made it up (eventually) to Mandu, a striking plateau covered with Afghani ruins.  The highlight here was not so much the ruins, though these were captivating, but the fact that the villages had grown up in and around them.  We hired bikes for 30p for the day, and went off on a ride through the paddy fields and villages to seek them out.  The town was tiny and a bit obscure, so we lodged in the local Shiva temples’ accommodation for pilgrims and got familiar with the temple bells and the bucket showers.

Last stop were the rock cut temples of Ajanta and Ellora, both a series of temples (the former Buddhist, the latter representing Buddhist, Hindu and the Jain faiths) cut into riverside cliffs from the living stone.  These places are for me the highlight so far of “tourist site” India.  I’ll let the photos at http://picasaweb.google.com.au/mark.bridget do the talking for me on this one.