Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra -- a Miscellany

Not For the Prudish

Khajuraho is best reached by plane because it's in the middle of nowhere. It's always been in the middle of nowhere, but once -- around the turn of the first millennium -- it was the religious center of the Chandela empire. Each monarch tried to build a better temple than his predecessor. They often succeeded.

A sound and light show is often a good introduction to a building or a site, which is slowly revealed instead of being seen all at once. I first experienced Albi cathedral that way, gradually realizing that the forbidding exterior concealed an extravagantly decorated interior. At Khajuraho, the dark shapes surrounding the audience were exposed not as trees, but as ornate towers. "Towers" does not convey quite the right image to westerners -- these are concave cylinders tapering to a point. Each section of a temple has a tower -- stepping up to the highest over the sanctum sanctorum at the back of the building.

From a distance, it's clear that the temples are heavily decorated, but a close-up view is needed to appreciate the details. I have often wondered how Victorian ladies and gentlemen, suddenly transported to India from the cold and prudish climate of England, must have felt. I wondered even more at Khajuraho. Depending on your prejudices, the statues covering these temples are artistic, erotic or pornographic.

Half-naked females in seductive poses -- I noticed few half-naked males -- and illustrations in stone of some of the Kama Sutra's more imaginative suggestions predominate. Since I am not particularly interested in naked females, I must confess that, despite the excellence of the carving, I began to find them merely repetitive. Inside the temples the statues are within touching distance, and it is easy to see which are the most popular. Constant handling darkens the stone, and many of the goddesses have one impossibly round breast dark and one light. (I was amazed at the Taj Mahal to see all the Indian visitors running their hands over the marble. The guides touch the stone, too.)

As empires will, the Chandela empire finally fell, and its temples were gradually forgotten, except by the local villagers. With the "discovery" by a British army engineer in 1839, and Khajuraho's subsequent inclusion on the tourists' must-see list, a second village has grown up. There is the old village -- homes, a few general stores, a primary school -- lost in primordial quiet, and the new -- hotels, cafes, bazaar -- full of hustlers. In Bhutan there were times, out of sight of the coach and my fellow travelers, surrounded by virgin forest, when I could imagine that I was back at the beginning of the human race. In the Indian countryside it is more a sense of the European Middle Ages, although with fewer trees. Once the car or rickshaw stops, there is no engine noise. Agriculture proceeds by human and animal power alone, as it has for so many centuries. Men and bullocks plough the fields and move the harvest, cows, pigs, goats wander unstaked, and women carry water. From the plane I had seen round, brick-edged wells, but the villagers now use hand pumps, which stand on concrete circles with overflow drains that bear an uncanny resemblance to the yoni that supports the lingam in the temples.

On to Orchha

The quiet in Orchha, off the main tourist trail, was even more profound than that in Khajuraho. While it was a peaceful place with a wide, clean, river and long views, the buildings were a disappointment. Vultures nest in the main palace, dark stains deface the chhattris, and the Lakshmi temple, with its murals, is locked. In addition, the audio guide to the palace is no longer available -- too much competition for the local guides, I suspect.

Back in Jaipur I had arranged for a car and driver to take me from Khajuraho to Orchha, and on to Jhansi to catch the train to Bhopal. As in Agra, the local agent came to my hotel to meet me, and in Khajuraho even escorted me to the evening's folk dance exhibition. We went on his motorbike, and I found that riding sidesaddle, as the Indian women do, is surprisingly comfortable. I have decided that trains plus cars is the best way to travel in India. Planes are too removed from reality, buses are just too uncomfortable, and it can be difficult to see much. Driving can be uncomfortable too (the roads are seldom smooth), but the seats are bigger and softer. Cross country travel in the U.S. often bores me -- I remember too many trips across South Carolina, six hours of nothing but sand and pine trees, cars and eighteen-wheelers. As in England, in India there always seems to be something new around the next corner. Some of the countryside even reminded me of England -- until I spotted a palm tree.

About the only form of transport I haven't seen much of in India is a bike pulling a cart -- ubiquitous in China. Men pushing carts, donkeys and even camels pulling them (the camels as supercilious as ever), and in Madhya Pradesh and further south the double-bullock cart. Bikes and motorbikes, cycle- and auto-rickshaws, white Ambassador cars and overloaded Tata trucks with "Horn Please" in rainbow colors on the back, all miraculously avoiding collision by millimeters. Driving across Madhya Pradesh, part of the "cow belt" heartland, I had the sudden, satisfying, sense of being in the right place, doing the right thing, I had experienced several times before on this trip.

By the time I reached Bhopal I was becoming seriously worried about the pain in my left leg. I began to have visions of hip replacement surgery and decided that a little pampering was in order. I had been in general agreement with Lonely Planet all across northern India, but now it was letting me down -- the author of this section obviously had different standards. After one night in "possibly Bhopal's best value hotel" I abandoned the airless room and minuscule bathroom, along with the friendly staff, and headed across town and upmarket to the Lake View Ashok. The noisy, dirty, old town (mosques and bazaars) and the relatively clean, quiet, tree-shaded new town are separated by a sizeable lake.

I had a good view of the lake, whisper-quiet AC, and plenty of room. Admittedly the AC didn't work from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., when the power was off, but the hotel's generator powered the ceiling fan, and there was a good breeze from the lake. The situation was worse in Khajuraho, where the power was off from 8:00 a.m. to noon. Back in Bhutan, I had seen one of the dams that provides hydroelectricity to India -- Bhutan's main export -- now I saw the need. I also read about "power thieves" -- people and even businesses tapping into the power lines, and that the Madhya Pradesh State Electricity Board owed 3,300 crore rupees to various power agencies. (1 crore = 10 million.)

Serene Sanchi

After a day's rest and a depressing evening watching Angela's Ashes on HBO, I took a car and driver to Sanchi. Indian towns have a lot of shops selling auto parts and service. That's because Indian cars have to last a long time -- I actually saw a Triumph Vitesse one day, a model I owned nearly 30 years ago. The taxi I took to Sanchi also seemed to need a rest -- every time we hit a major pothole (i.e. much of the time) it sounded as if a critical component, the front axle, maybe, was going to fall off. Don't get the wrong picture from the word "shop". Shops in India, as in other parts of Asia, are often literally holes in the wall. Most Indian buildings are a series of boxes, and shops are ground floor boxes with open fronts, closed at night by metal shutters -- like garage doors. In especially poor areas the shutters are wood. In especially shallow boxes the owner may sit on the counter, which is at the front. Shoppers stand in the street and ask for what they want -- even at bookshops.

The car held together and for an extra 20/- in admission fees took me up the hill at Sanchi, where the Buddhist stupas and the remains of temples and monasteries date back to the third century B.C.E. The wonderfully carved toranas at the four cardinal directions around the main stupa kept me happily occupied for five circuits. When I was there the site was peaceful, with minimal hassles, although "lakhs" of visitors were expected the next day for the annual Chethiyagiri Vihara festival honoring the relics of two of Buddha's early disciples. (1 lakh = 100,000, written 1,00,000.)

Prehistory Up Close

I took the same car to visit the Bhimbetka prehistoric cave paintings. Well out in the country, at the top of a rocky hill, the site is protected only by some barbed wire and a few rapacious guides. Unfortunately, the wire cuts off much of the site. I bypassed the first barrier, but honored the second, more serious one. The "caves" are really rock overhangs, and were used over many thousands of years. The paintings date from at least three periods, the earliest from 12,000 years ago. Considering the care taken of Lascaux, for instance, it was a little disconcerting to find these paintings out in the open, within reach.

Few people seem to know about Bhimbetka, and Bhopal is known instead for the horrendous Union Carbide chemical spill. There are no signs of that disaster immediately apparent, and I was told by a Swiss traveler who claimed to be a freelance photographer that access to the factory site was blocked. I planned to read Dominique Lapierre's new book about Bhopal -- "It was Five Past Midnight".

"Modern" Caves

After Bhopal I intended to visit the Ajanta and Ellora caves, and when I planned my itinerary back in August it seemed that I would have to do so by bus. Indian Railways came to my rescue: when I checked their web site in October I found that they had added a direct train from Bhopal to Aurangabad, the usual base for visiting the caves. In deference to my leg, which was still bothering me, I hired a car from Aurangabad to Ellora (with a chatty old character for a driver), and took a Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation tour to Ajanta. Aurangabad itself was memorable for only two things: rickshaw drivers who used their meters but tried to go the long way round, and a careless request for black coffee that resulted in the delivery of a small silver cup of Nescafe powder and a larger cup of sweetened water. The correct mantra is "coffee, black, no milk, no sugar" with a smile and a shrug for such eccentricity.

The Ellora caves were everything I could ask for -- Buddhist, Hindu and Jain, dating from 600-1100 C.E., and almost all full of wonderful carving. The piece de resistance, the Kailasanatha temple at "cave" 16 had been cut down into the cliff side, carved from top to bottom, and would have been impressive enough built from the ground up.

I found Ajanta less enticing. Here the attraction is painting rather than carving, and the paintings are hard to see and in poor condition. The setting is magnificent -- a curving cliff above a river -- but the site is also more popular than Ellora.

After all these temples and caves I was ready for a rest. Goa beckoned, but first I spent one night in Mumbai, where the Elephanta caves were a severe disappointment after Ellora.

Sent from Bangalore, Karnataka, Dec. 18 about Khajuraho, Orchha, and Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, Aurangabad and Mumbai, Maharashtra Nov. 19 - Dec. 1

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