Orchha

It was back to the train station the next day. One of the great things about India (and there are many great things about India!) is that you can get anything repaired anywhere at any time. Agra railway station is full of men with well-stocked kits ready to repair your shoes, suitcases, bags, zips, clothes and anything else that is not perfect. I had bought a cheap backpack for this trip, and abandoned my large suitcase in Delhi. I had also bought a cheap daypack. Both of them began falling apart within minutes of being purchased. So at Agra railway station a man stitched the straps on my backpack, repaired the carrying handle, reinforced the daypack (which was coming apart) and stitched up my 10-year-old Teva sandals, which had seen service in a civil war in Bougainville and I was not about to give up now. The photo above shows him hard at work. After a few minutes and a very few rupees, everything was good to go. My Tevas have years left in them (or so I felt).


We took the train from Agra to Jhansi where we boarded tempos, which are basically large versions of auto-rickshaws. An hour or so later we were in Orchha, a fabulous little town in the middle of nowhere. It had once been a royal seat of power and so it had an inordinate number of palaces and temples, and not much else. We slept in tents and were helpfully provided with padlocks to secure them. I think that they were more decorative than serving any useful function in preventing theft from a tent!


The next day (16th November) we toured the main old palace. We then wandered about town, which consists of only a few streets with a massive temple at the centre. We visited another temple, dedicated to Lakshmi, which had fascinating wall carvings of historical events. Of most interest to me was the depiction of the British soldiers coming to this area in the 1790’s, complete with arms full of wine bottles and feathers in their hats (see photo). My own ancestors were in the British Army and spent a few years storming about this area putting down opposition to British rule. I wonder whether they carried wine bottles into battle?

In the late afternoon a few of us hired a raft and rowed down the Betwa River. It was a wonderful sight with wild jungle on one side and something like 27 temples and palaces on the other side of the river. At a quiet point we swam in the river and just enjoyed the stillness.

Later that evening we went to the Ram Raja temple to watch puja (Hindu worship). Elke and I went up to the idol of Ram Raja where the priests offered blessings for a short period each day. Elke was trying to buy a house back home in Holland and she asked Ram Raja to resolve it all quickly. We returned to our little tents and within half an hour Elke received a phone call from her boyfriend in Holland telling her that the house purchase was all settled. So well done Ram Raja!


The following morning was the 11th after Diwali and so another Hindu festival was held. There seems to be almost one a day. Thousands of women came down to the banks of the Betwa River to do puja and ceremonially cleanse themselves. Gurus (religious teachers) and sadhus (holy men) abounded and there were flowers strewn about the streets to grace their steps. It was a wonderful morning and people were only too happy to explain what was going on and what it all meant.

we had a cooking class with a local family, which was just brilliant, and then we headed by tempo back to Jhansi and the railway station. This time we boarded the overnight train to Allahabad.

What can you say about an overnight train in India? Well, let’s start with noisy, crowded, dirty, alternately freezing cold and boiling hot, smelly, did I mention noisy and crowded? We were in six-berth ‘cabins’ that were only separated by curtains from the corridor and the next ‘cabin’. Men and women, Indians and foreigners, young and old were all mixed in together. Two of our group, Martin and Rob, were over six feet tall and had a very uncomfortable time in the narrow, short bunks built for Indians. Nevertheless, it was just another Indian experience for those of us who were a bit shorter, and I had a reasonable, if often interrupted, night’s sleep. We arrived in Allahabad just after dawn, and visited the family home of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Ghandi. Then a jeep took us to banks of the River Ganges for the next part of our journey.