Palace Living and Dubious Characters
We finally reached the top of the steps to the palace and most gratefully sank into the seats in Reception. This was about 7am and we were now surrounded by archways and columns, rich furnishings and other such trappings. We managed to scrounge a wash in a bathroom, which had the most incredible view I’ve ever seen. Jungle and ancient monuments for miles - as far as the eye could see. Barely room to turn around, and dangerous slippery marble steps to contend with, but great view. Back down at reception, having scoffed breakfast – Paul eating his second-favorite dish, cornflakes (the nearest to wheatbix you can find in India) and me hauling out the ever-faithful jar of vegemite to have on my “butter toast” - Paul did a bit of name dropping (a good friend of his brought many tours here over the years) and we were given the second best room in the palace , the Maharani suite. This was on the top floor, with a courtyard about the size of a tennis court - the Maharaja suite at one end and ours at the other.
Our lodgings had a small entranceway with cute wooden arched double doors. Inside was a room with a small-double sized bed and pillows in a niche to the left of the door. Straight ahead was a smaller niche halfway up the wall, with a painting of Ganesha, the Elephant God, in the back of it. The room seemed small, but the walls were painted white, sunshine gently touched the walls and it felt very havenish – safe and cool, clean and tidy. After the train experience and sleeping on the side of the street, my mind just screamed, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Then the “boy” walked us through another archway at the far end of the room to an enormous suite. I don’t know about Paul, but I damned near fell over when I saw it. It was huge! It took a while to sink in that all of this was for us – a football team could’ve wallowed in there on their backs with plenty of room left for the opposite team and most of their supporters! It started with a curved sofa and table, then further along was a long columned bay window where you could actually lie on cushions and futon, and watch the world from, a large bed that was NOT 2 beds stuck together, as is the usual in my experience so far, and a generous-sized marble bathroom with a shower and a western toilet. It even had toilet paper. Although if you ever stay at this palace , may I recommend you bring your own no.5 grade sandpaper for extra softness.
What a scream. We went from fighting off pack dogs and sleeping on a wooden bench on the street to the second best room in a palace in a matter of hours. Nice juxtaposition, what?
From the roof of our palace we looked up at another palace , which was apparently made for the Moghul of the time by the Maharaja. He only visited the place once, the ungrateful sod. Below us was yet another palace , built as a bachelor pad for the Maharaja after the Maharani went a bit funny and kicked him out. It can’t have been easy or cheap to keep one’s dignity in those days.
I spent a fair bit of time amusing myself taking photos of the vultures on the palace roof next door. Wonderful creepy-looking birds - so photogenic. I was in heaven.
We wallowed in luxury for a bit then went for a wander around the town. This took time, as (it seemed) every second person on the main street came up to Paul and greeted him delightedly. And of course, one must take chai in these situations, or have a “Limca” - local soft drink. This was Paul’s 4th visit to this village and he has made many friends here. But we gradually got around the place and my camera was running hot from use. We sat up in the chattri’s (several story high memorial monuments) by the river and watched some kind of monkeys groom each other, parrots flying around, vultures skulking the sky of course and the locals down below going about their day. I now have dozens of photos of monuments and ruins to bore people with when I get home. And the people are so friendly and laid back in this place. Even the cows are more laid-back than the Delhi ones, if indeed this is possible.
In the evening we quaffed a gin or two, feeling rather chuffed with this lovely situation of unaccustomed luxury. Then I went up onto the roof above the courtyard to see the stars (I was in luck – I could see all three of them now that we were away from the city lights). Meanwhile, down below in the courtyard, Paul managed to get us invited to try a bit of “mutton” (which is Indian for goat) by a local businessman. He was a V.I.M. (Very Important Man) it seemed, as he had his own personal soldiers and 2 men fanning him at all times, whilst he sat holding court at a small banquet table. Our interpreter – a local man who was acquainted with Paul – was constantly perspiring and wiping his brow. Paul quietly told me later that it was probably as much out of fear of the V.I.M. who is apparently the equivalent of a Mafia boss, as it was from the heat. I’m glad I didn’t find that out until afterwards.
Although I was a bit put out by the men intruding in ‘our’ courtyard, we didn’t have much choice but to join them or else seem rude or ungracious. So I naturally fell into the “meek and graceful wife” role, which I immediately sensed was the right thing to do, while Paul did his best not to be too smug in his role of “man of the household”. He struggled with this, but pulled it off fairly well, though I’m sure I caught him straining at the edges of the mouth once or twice, trying not to grin.
This V.I.M.’s “mutton” curry, which he’d ordered to be cooked to his recipe by the Palace ’s chefs, was the hottest thing I’ve eaten so far in India. Any hotter and I’m sure my head would’ve been on fire. We listened to him politely while he talked about this and that, our heads turning back and forward between him and his interpreter, then after an hour or so made our excuses and retired to our suite to continue our dinner. Upon meeting up with the interpreter later in the evening, Paul was told that “it was verrry good that you were going when you did. This man verrry important, very dangerous and his soldiers verrry dangerous when drinking, and as you were seeing, they are having beers while he eats dinner. You left just at the right time.” (Much perspiration and head wobble).
The next morning whilst we woefully made preparations to give up our palace life, a local friend of Paul’s popped in to see us. He said that we would find a lot of the shops closed today and the villagers a little subdued. Apparently one of the locals had been murdered last night – but none of the tourist knew this, only the villagers were aware of it and they were keeping it quiet. Our eyes grew large as we realized it was a good possibility that we had dined with the perpetrator of this horrendous crime or at least the guy who had ordered his personal soldiers to do it. Funnily, we never talked about it for our remaining time in India. Only when we were out of the country did we feel safe to discuss it together. Even then I felt like looking over my shoulder.
We went downtown and booked a room at a guesthouse, then went on a tour of the museum monuments.
Back up at the palace , you buy a ticket to visit these monuments – about six of them I think - and your ticket is only valid for that day. But you get to see inside the other two palaces and view the paintings on the ceilings, walk around the crumbling rooftops, peek through the jali work (sort of fancy stone latticework that the women used look through to see without being seen - all hand carved!) - and totally wear your legs out climbing up and down steps. In India, everything seems to be up steep steps! How on earth they got flash furniture into the rooms on the upper floors I’ll never know. You have to look for the steps before having the pleasure of climbing them because they hid them in little niches around corners. Very narrow, very uneven and sometimes very dark. Sometimes you have to put your hands against the wall to balance, all the time hoping you don’t touch a lizard or a spider or anything else squishable.
The gate in the wall surrounding the palaces is a pretty awesome looking beastie. It’s really really really tall and has huge vicious looking anti-elephant spikes on the doors. It’s cunningly set around a corner to render battering rams completely useless. Paul and I were a little embarrassed on behalf of all those European castles that were frequently annoyed by enemies with their battering rams throughout history. All that hot pitch and oil, soldiers killed and women and children slaughtered when they could have saved themselves a lot of money and bother by just putting the gate around a corner! I think that’s the one time we rolled our eyes about ourselves rather than about India.
Each day a little old lady sits at that gate and you pay her 10 Rupee to take her photo. It’s rather a good arrangement actually – she gets to make a living and at the same time gives some perspective to your photo, so you can see just how big the gate is.
On the second morning, in our guesthouse room, I heard a loud chirruping noise just outside. I opened the door onto the tiny balcony, stepped out and came face to face with a monkey. I’m not sure who got more of a surprise - him or me. Turned out there were several of them, and one had stolen some chapati from somewhere. I had a brilliant time sitting on the balcony with my camera and got some very nice shots of them eating chapati on rooftops and stealing them from each other. And a wonderful close-up of the one outside our room who was using the TV aerial cord as his ladder. These were langur monkeys - white-faced ones of a reasonable size with amazingly long tails. They don’t hassle humans like the big brown rhesus ones do, so I felt pretty safe. What a wonderful way to start the day. Our room looked over the main street and was right next to the gateway to the market square, so I sat out there for quite a while and happily watched the town wake up and thaw out ready for the day. Later I left the balcony door open so Paul (still slumbering) had some fresh air, and went for a wander in the market. Not a lot of people were around yet, and uniformed kids were strolling off to school, so I just meandered around looking for a while. I had a chai at the local corner shop and struck up conversation with a boy who was minding his family’s shoe shop. He had quite nice English and wanted to be a tour guide when he grew up and he gave me a little wooden elephant keying from Rajasthan as a gesture of friendship and I gave him some kiwi coins. When I got back to the room, Paul scolded me. “You left the door open while I was asleep. What about the monkeys?” Monkeys? What about them? It turns out that they have no problem wandering into your room and helping themselves to your stuff. But how was I to know that? I’m from New Zealand. The worst thing we’d probably get would be a hedgehog slipping in to eat the cat food or a weta getting into the wood box. Boy did I have some things to learn!
We spent the morning doing more building looking and photo taking and generally lolling about. We ate at Paul’s friend’s restaurant most of the time. This is a humble little place where you are served on the footpath outside a building with a roller door. Many of India’s flies live here. Can’t say I blame them, as the food is great and the view of the village goings-on fantastic. Parbat and his wife Rani live behind this restaurant with their 4 kids and run it. They just put their plastic tables and chairs straight out on the street because there’s a tree there giving shade. But that’s okay because the traffic and tractors and cows and dogs just amble around you. Although one cow had a go at peeing by our table and I had to rescue my bag off the ground pretty quick.
One of the more remarkable things we saw was one of the world’s oldest air-conditioning systems. Two stone towers that drew air downwards which was then channeled into the building next door, cooling it. Yet another example of Indian brilliance.
Tags: India, Madhya Pradesh, Orchha, Palaces, Travel
