Rob and Anna's travel adventure: Khajuraho, India

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Khajuraho, India

Anna's entry:

The finest temple art in the world, this is what Khajuraho is famous for! And, I am not referring to the modest spiritual architecture, quite the opposite! Among the numerous intricate carvings, the obvious focus is apparent - people (and sometimes animals) and sex. I am not kidding you! This is Kama Sutra set in stone. The erotic content of the temple art is beautifully presented. Various temples show numerous sexual positions, quite acrobatic at times, sensuous illustrations, and passionate moments among men and women, and frequently between several men and women. :)
Once in a while, you may also come across erotic attempts of humans expressing their "interest" to animals. This is all beautifully presented (through detailed carvings), and one has to appreciate the unconventional interpretation of the temple artists of the 10th century! Obviously, it was the time of celebration of a human flash, perhaps it was a Renaissance of India? The temples are obviously dedicated to the Hindi Gods and Goddesses, and the views of the temples were incredible.

While walking around the temples, I encountered a large family of monkeys. Some tourists tried to harass them with their cameras, so monkeys were hissing at them. Instead I sat down on the edge of the temple, and let the monkeys do whatever they were doing. One of the female monkeys seemingly got used to me, and was sitting near me. She was holding something. I tried to see what it was, and she seemingly understood. She opened her arms, and it was a newly born baby monkey! It was tiny and hairless, and obviously the mom was very proud to show him or her to me. I took some photos, and thanked the mom. All of a sudden, a drama began developing. Some adult male monkeys began attacking her, perhaps, they were after her baby? She began racing like crazy, and the entire monkey family were screaming, and running in circle. Eventually, the drama subsided, and all quited down...

Another thing I wanted to comment on was our stay in Khajuraho. The room we had was very cheap, only $5. The hotel was also located across the road from the temples, and we had to go through a crowd of touts (sellers trying to offer you some crafts and other souvenir junk, or maybe not so much of junk as "art and crafts"). Anyway, since we had to walk through the art strip, we were always asked to come in and look at what was available, and it is very tiresome to be constantly hassled. The usual phrase would be "come to my store, just look, don't buy, you will make me very happy". After 1,000,000 times of being asked (though we refused every time to buy anything), we decided to have fun with it. We began replying with different jokes, and teasing the sellers. I think we got the right crowd, so we all began laughing eventually. On our departure day the touts were a kinda sad to see us leave, even though we did not buy anything from them, they sure appreciated good laughs with us. In one of the internet shops, we got to know the owner (Kumar), and we exchanged a collection of downloaded music. So, we've got the entire hot Indian techno-music, including my favourite Shah Rukh Haan.