No Hard Sell

I awoke at the Orchha Resort Hotel feeling pretty good, wishing that I had felt well enough to watch the sun set over the Betwa River, one of the cleanest in India, the night before.   You could see people doing their morning wash from the grounds of the hotel.

Mickey Mouse beckoned from the bottom of the pool.  I preferred this kitschy Ganesha.

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Even though swastika means "to be good" in Sanskrit, spotting this one decorating a structure at the hotel made me gasp.  Westerners just can't escape how the Nazis perverted it.

Hemanth, our guide, took us to the palace straightaway.  He had a masters degree in architecture and bragged that Josh Hartnett had made use of his services last year while filming Singularity, Roland Joffe's ill-fated time travel romance. Better still, Hemanth answered every one of my persistent questions, cheerfully admitting he made up the answers he didn't know.

Andrew & Steven said they preferred this palace which once hosted Rudyard Kipling, to the Taj.  Much of it is now a luxury hotel, with so few rooms that it couldn't accommodate our group.

Thom is seated here on the royal loading platform.  If you were getting off an elephant, you used the top level.  Camel riders stepped off onto the second level.

Palanquins like these unloaded at the lower level.

Here's the camel stable.

And a view of the enormous mausoleums in the distance.

Look at these details.

Even more beautiful were these brightly painted frescoes illustrating Hindu mythology and preserved for more than 500 years in shadowy, damp rooms now littered with trash.  I have to admit I was pretty skeptical, mostly because you could reach out and touch them. But along with the verdant landscape surrounding the palace, they're one of the main reasons that Andrew & Steven enjoyed the place so much.

Maybe this door kept out the vandals.  Hemanth said the jutting metal spikes made it elephant proof.

The actual village was our next stop.  Backpackers and other tourists love Orchha because it offers safe haven from the vendor assaults you experience everywhere else in the country.

In an effort to keep Orchha as picturesque as possible, local politicians recently passed a law prohibiting storefronts from extending too far out into the side streets.  It doesn't appear that they gave the ordinance a lot of thought beforehand.

The happy residents use all sorts of conveyances.

After washing their clothing in the Betwa River, women in colorful saris carry water to the Hindu temple in the town square for a blessing.  They also bring sweets which means that the place swarms with very gentle wasps and bees who can't be bothered with stinging you.

See how they empty their little pails into the large bucket at the entrance to Chaturbhuj Temple, built upon a vast platform of stone.  Hemanth claimed that securing a blessing for their family is the only contribution women can make outside the home.  He also claimed that the entire world worships the same god because the names of the world's major holy books, the Bible, the Torah and the Koran, each have 5 letters, as does the name of the supreme Hindu god, Shiva.  I liked him much better at the palace when he explained how oxen cranking a wheel once produced enough pressure to make water spurt from the lovely fountains, now long dry.

We had several close encounters with cows.

Matthew used the opportunity to get rid of the fragrant rose petal necklace Hemanth had given us when he arrived at the hotel.

I wonder if cows are like deer, who refuse to eat marigolds?

Once again, we were astonished by the friendliness of the people.  These teenagers and a lot of their less attractive friends insisted on shaking our hands and having their pictures taken with us.  Cropping can be so useful!

This photo, my favorite of the trip, is just too meta:  cowboys and Indians, indeed!

I'm sorry no one ever invited us into their homes.  It would have been so interesting to see what's behind this beautifully painted gate.

Despite the lack of "hard sell," there's no shortage of things to buy.  From colorful powders

. . . to antique coins

. . .  to beaded necklaces

. . . to swastika stamps

. . . to embroidered fabrics.

Orchha is also justly famous for its tombs.  Just one person is buried in the mausoleum behind us.  Note how Thom is actively trying to prevent me from flashing a piece sign by this stage of the trip.

Here's an arch on the grounds of what is essentially a royal cemetery.  I love its simplicity.