| Travelogue de mon Khajuraho voyage |
[02 Feb 2004|02:16pm] |
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Yet another extempore trip. I was longing to visit this place, ever since I have done a course on Art appreciation. We decided to start our journey at three in the morning. Till late evening I was busy completing my project assignment and then designing a thisrt for our department. It was 9:30 by then and I was exhausted and extremely hungry. After the dinner I had 3 hours to: do a little bit of packing, have a small nap, a warm shower and call home to tell that I am going out.Surprisingly enough I managed to do all three of them.
So, it was 2:30 am. The cab was supposed to be there at 3:00. So we all got ready with blankets, warm clothings and other stuff and ofcourse the digicams. After a lot of bullshitting at the Hall-1 gate we saw a Qualis approaching us. I saw my watch and it showed 3:30.Well we started, the nine of us stuffed somehow in the SUV. The Kanpur roads wore an altogether different attire in that early morning. A light drizzle made Kanpur look so shiny and clean to my utmost surprise. As soon as we reached the outskirts of Kanpur the road disappeared and we found ourelves on a roller coaster ride. We hardly travelled for 20 miles and then the light drizzle turned into a heavy shower. Everywhere it was dark. Only light I could see was that of our cab and some odd trucks and yeah a few lightnings as well. Very soon we found something hitting the cab ... hailstorm!! I tried to catch a few from inside the cab and was able to taste one... wow it was so tasty!! Just two hours of journey and we saw so much. At around 5:40am the reer tyre of the cab gave up and while the driver was fixing it we all came out enjoying the beautiful landscape cladded with mustard fields and feebly lightened by the early dawn. We had our breakfast and clicked some snaps. And the backseaters exchanged with the ones sitting in front.
At around 8:30 we reached a place called Lauri on the MP-UP border. There was a clean river flowing on rocks and it gave an impression of a little waterfall. So pure and clean it was.A couple of snaps there as well. Around 9:45 we reached the Khajuraho. The little place is an oasis in the otherwise barren area. 80% of the restaurants I saw were either Italian or Korean and so was the ratio of tourists. Most of them from Japan and Italy. It was a bit disheartening to see that people from abroad travel soo much to come and appreciate the ancient Indian art work while we dont. The first place we visited was the Western campus of temples made by the Chandelas in 14th century. The campus was so well maintained, the beautiful flowers and the lush green grass gave a perfect background to the mirrors of ancient Indian art, wondeful temples. We started with Laskhamana Temple, Varaha Temple and moved on to see 8 of them in total. The whole 50-60 feet of the height of all the temples was covered with beautiful murals and reliefs carved out of the sandstone walls. There was a classy perfection in each of those sculptures. You should see the snaps to appreciate th beauty of these ancient temples. This western campus is now declared as the World Heritage Site.
We completed the wetern campus by 12:00. Clicked lots and lots of snaps.The weather was extreemely friendly. Earlier in the morning the sun was hiding behind the clouds. It came out afterwards and kept playing hide and seek with the clouds. We had our lunch in a Marwari Restaurant  , which we found out after asking many people.
Well after a nice lunch we headed for Ranhe Falls, 20 kms from Khajuraho.Reaching there we found out that the fall was inside a wlidlife sanctuary named Ken Gharial. The place was really beautiful, thick dense forest and deers and neelgaays roaming it looked as if we were driving through a real jungle.We reached the fall after a drive of 2 kms inside the sanctuary. The waterfall was so sexy!! It was quite high and was surrounded by four colors of igneous rocks, black, green ,pale white and burgundy. The whole of that area of Madhya Pradesh is famous for minerals including Asia's largest diamond mines. The Ranhe river was looking extremely beautiful with that lively and picteresque landscape of the colorful rocks. We clicked lots of snaps there. After that we travelled another 6 kms inside the sanctuary to go to another point which was close to the river. We collected lots of colorful stones there and clicked lots of snaps. It was getting late and the driver was continously warning us about the robbery incidents near that area. Thanfully nothing went wrong. But the journey back to IITK was extreemely painful as all of us were tired and devoid of sleep and the roads were horrible. Well we passed our time watching the clicked snaps and solving lateral thinking questions and 20 question guess. In all the trip was a trip of lifetime .. each one of us enjoyed it a lot.I would suggest you to be there and appreciate the art work of the temples and the sprwaling natural beauty bestowed on the north-east part of Madhya Pradesh.
geeee!!! I made it soo long
Click here for some selected snaps!!
 Pranshu
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