Todd and Lisa's RTW trip

We abrubtly ended our last entry due to a nosey Indian man… and a painfully slow internet connection. Khahujaro was wonderful. Going into the Indian kitchen was… we can’t even explain!! We decided to splurge and fly from Kha. to Varnassi, Instead of taking a 6 hour bus to a 12 hour train!! When we arrived at the airport, 30kms out of town, we hitched a ride with a spanish tour group into town. It was very lux., planes and a/c’ed bus!! Varanassi is said to be the holiest place. Every year thousands of people make pilgramages here to die or to wash away there sins by bathing in the river. (it looks to us this river could wash away nothing…its FILTHY). We took a boat along the river at 6 am today to watch. There are burning ghats along the river that cremate hundreds of people daily.

Below are some pics.. probably out of order.. but in india, you take what you can get. Thanks for all the comments, we have been laughing out loud. Oh yeah, when the airport told us we got a discount for being under 30.. Todd goes “Holy Cow”… they looked at us strange and then were like… oh this is the land of holy cow…we were hysterical. You should see, cows (and cowshit) are everywhere!!!

In Orchha there was another festival of Gensha, (who is a god not a goddess like we had said earlier) going on. All the the people were dancing in the streets, riding in the back of trucks, playing music and throwing colored powdered stuff all over. It was really fun!!!

You can see the pink covered boys behind. Aren’t these dresses beautiful!

Here we are on top of the Temple that the boy brought us up. Behind us is the Palace. (ladies, please no do- rag comments).

This is a view in the other direction.. we LOVED it here (click to enlarge)

At the market they sell this bright powder. They call it incense… but it just looks like colored powder to us. It’s the same stuff they put on there foreheads.

In Khajuraho, we turned to the temples for some advice how to have a successful relationship!! (click to enlarge)

And how to have an unsuccessful relationship….

Seriously, this temple below was just one of the 7 temples that are covered in these detailed Kharma Sutra sculptures.

Todd also partook in the Indian custom of gettting a street shave. It was a Hoot!

That’s it for now… we’ll keep you posted!!

Well…Bhopal was more like bo-HELL!! We arrived, it was raining, everything stunk and it was so polluted we felt like we were smokin da tailpipe of a 1950’s bus!! we got a hotel room and hibernated in it. Lisa was just about ready to give up on India….

We got up in the morning, got charged for our included breakfast (typical), and headed out of Bhopal with our bandana’s over our mouths. We took the train for about 5 hours to a town called Jhansi. From Jhansi we caught a tempo, which is a bigger rickshaw, and rode about 40 minutes to a town called Orchha. Our entire view of India changed.

Orchha was a wonderful. It is a small town, that has not been ruined by tourist. No one ran up to us and tried to sell us stuff, no one hassled us, it was wonderful. The children on the street all yelled out hello and ran up to shake our hand. They were all so cute. We spent two days exploring the old palaces and castles of Orchha with the village children. One boy unlocked a temple for us and led us up narrow stairwells to a roof with a wonderful view, complete with wild monkeys and parrots. He asked us all sorts of questions about America, the most memorable being “how many tennis courts are there in USA?”. Another boy led us through feilds of mud to a bunch of temples, along the way he called every animal a monkey, including the bats inside the temples that really freaked Lisa out. Like we wrote above, the people in Orchha really changed how we feel about India.
From Orchha we hopped on an awful bus ride to a town called Khajuraho, also a sleepy village. This place is a little more touristy, so we have to deal with all the hussle, but in between it all we are meeting some great people. Todd had befriended the owner of the restaurant next door to our hotel. He has invited him to help in his kitchen and learn Indian cooking.
Khajuraho is well known for it massive temples from around 900 A.D. The temples have outrageous sculptures all around them (see attached photos… hopefully).

This connection is to slow…. more to come later!!!

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