Sex temples of Khajuraho and Orchha's forgotten city

From Agra, our next destination was Orchha and its forgotten city. To get there, we were taking a train connection to Jhansi and then arranging a car. The same car would then drive us to Khajuraho.
The train was leaving at 9am and was suppose to take only 3.5 hours to get to Jhansi. From previous experience we were hoping that the delay will not be more than an hour, but we were wrong.
Eventually getting to Jhansi 2.5 hours later than expected we had to rush with finding a car. First we went to the tourist office at the station and asked for prices. Some guy there told us that we will have to pay 3.5K (about 42 Euros) without stopping and waiting at Orchha. It felt like a wrong price to pay and we decided to try our luck with the taxi drivers outside.
So far, we learned that the "bad cop, good cop" tactics works the best. I was the bad cop :-) The taxi guys outside started from 3.2K, with me saying 2K. They put on an act that the price I named was outrageously low. About 10 min later Dima's "not for you, not for me: 2.5K" sealed the deal and after repeating at least ten times that this price includes everything, and we mean - EVERYTHING, we were good to go.

On the way we saw some strange structures, looking a lot like igloos. I said that they are for cooking and Dima was insisting that people live in them... May be he was right, because they look rather big for a kitchen.

Orchha is just 15km away from Jhansi and 20 min by car. The bridge and the entrance gates already create an impression.

A mandatory picture of the driver and the car's license plates. This in case the driver will take off with our stuff in the trunk. At least it's evidence :-)

The forgotten city is really huge and normally you start with the first two main palaces.

Another climb upstairs and you are all the way on top.

From here you can see how huge the city's grounds are. However, due to the train delay in the morning, we had no time left to explore them.  

From the other side the second palace and the temple are visible.

Locals frequently visit the heritage sites and add color to the place.

Due to the lack of time we decided to only stop at the temple and then move on.

The temple is surrounded with numerous stalls selling what looks like paints to me, and I still wonder what they were for...

The temple itself looked more like a Christian cathedral than a temple, with huge inner space and monumental walls.

This one we saw from the temple's window, not sure what it was, but definitely a newly built. We both decided that it is probably one of the governmental buildings.

After the temple we were almost getting in the car when I saw that the river was just a couple of hundreds of meters away and went up and down to take some pics.

Our driver started to get nervous that it was getting dark soon and insisted that we drive to Khajuraho.

Driving in a car in India during the day time is not always the greatest experience, but at night it gets 10 times worth. We needed 3 hours to get to Khajuraho and they were the longest ones ever.

Once arrived, we found out that there was absolutely nothing to do in Khajuraho in the evening except for eating and browsing the web, and that's exactly what we did. The rest of the evening Dima was reading/watching news and I was writing the blog.

The next day we had plans to see Khajuraho's famous sex temples. The town itself is just a dusty little place with a couple of streets, numerous guest houses and all food joints selling Italian food! I don't know what is reason for them to think that Italian food in India will be a major success, but apparently they do.

After grabbing some food (not Italian but very close)...

...we walked to the Western Group of Temples, which was just 10 min away from the guest house. This group is by far the largest, the most interesting and the best preserved one among the existing three.

So, this is basically what it is all about :-)

More Kama sutra preserved in stone for all eternity...

Dima is growing a beard and it's now almost 3 weeks old! A definite advantage as locals started to think that he is Indian :-)

At some point we regretted not wearing flip-flops, as removing our shoes at each and every temple was getting tiring.

When walking out of the gate to the Western group of temples we saw this useful place :-) I am wondering how many people were complaining about something that they had to set up a Tourist Police Substation...

After the Western group, the  Eastern one looked very modest and not at all interesting.

Seeing the Eastern group and not being impressed, we decided to skip the Southern group of temples. According to the receptionist at the guest house, there were some waterfalls in the area, but they were 25km away and we didn't have that much time before dark to go and see them.
As there was nothing else to do, we settled on the rooftop of one of the guest houses and watched the tourists being harassed by the locals. This was the only place so far where we really had to fight them off. Really annoying and frustrating. At some point we found a way to get rid of them in a shortest amount of time possible. As it turned out, Indians have a very short attention span. If you ignore them altogether from the moment they address you, don't look at them and don't say a word, even a "no", they will loose all interest in you in a couple of seconds. Worked like a charm :-) Unfortunately, not all tourists realized it and it was interesting to see them trying to shake off the locals.

After dark we got back to the guest house where we met a group of Russian guys trying to get a cab to the train station. The one they booked earlier didn't show up and they were pressed for time. This reminded us that we need to arrange ours as well. We decided to go for the auto rickshaw since the station we were departing from was just 9km away.
The Russian guys left and we forgot to exchange contact details, a pity because we had some really good laughs together while waiting for their other taxi.
Our train was scheduled to depart at 23:40 and we arranged with the auto rickshaw that he will pick us up at 22:30. He showed up on time but claimed that he will be taking two extra people with us to the station in the same tuk tuk. Considering that you can only fit two people with bags in that thing we refused and he left, leaving us to find another one. Luckily, we did find one quite fast, but then it got really  interesting. When we were getting in, two locals showed up, looked at us and started to call someone. Our driver was stalling time and only after we started to scream at him that he needs to go and that we will miss our train, he reluctantly started to move. In the wrong direction! When we pointed it out, he said that you can drive to station both ways, so we continued. The road was going through some trees/forest, it was very dark, no lights and we both started to get nervous. We didn't like the way the other guys were looking at us, and adding up to this, our driver was moving very slowly; so slowly in fact, that it felt like he was doing it on purpose.
With us, we had a small knife that Dima got out of the backpack and we were constantly turning around to see if anyone was following.
Eventually we got to the station safe and sound, nothing happened, but I think this ride was the scariest one I've ever had, and the twenty minutes it lasted felt like forever. We were both very happy to be at the station and with the fact that this was the last train we had to take so late.
At the station, we found out that our train's arrival was an hour late (again! it's now became a bad habit), but our carriage was added to the train at this station and we could board after all and wait inside. Our arrival to Varanasi was scheduled for 10:50am the next day and we already knew that we will be at least an hour late, but what happened the next day was beyond our imagination.

Conclusion: sex temples are fun, but the rest is completely uninteresting. Also here the people are most annoying and like to follow you around wherever you go. Better to pass the town through without spending the night, but it's only possible if you are coming here from Varanasi, not in the opposite direction.

Next: Varanasi - craziness of the holy city and the Ghats