Sorry for posting this out of chronological order – I had a bit of computer glitch. Happy New Year to all.

January 1, 2013

Happy New Year every one! We started our new year in Khajuraho temples where the Kama sutra carvings were built over 200 years, from 950 to 1150. The local people always knew about the temples but they became overgrown by the jungle. In the 1800’s a British soldier found them and started the restoration process with the blessings of the Indian Archaeological Society. The temples are now a UNESCO World Heritage site and are considered one of the seven man-made wonders of the world! We have now seen 4/7 including Chichen Itza in Mexico, the coliseum in Rome, and The Taj Mahal and the Khajuraho temples.

The temples were fascinating. The carvings depicted Hindu gods, goddesses, and scenes from daily life or military life. The carvings were made to help people to prepare to go into the temple. The guide said that the temples were built with the idea that you would first walk around them in a clockwise direction so that you would start to shift your focus from worldly concerns to a more meditative, mindful state. If you looked at the carvings and they distracted you by the content, you were not ready to go in. Keep walking! The graphic sexual imagery was not designed as pornography but as a means of confirming sex as a normal and important aspect of life. The carvings were all made from stone and are freestanding statues connected to a huge brick. The temples were made with an interlocking block pattern (like really big Lego) and no mortar was used. We walked around the site for a couple of hours. This is one of those places where you have to stop looking after a while because you can’t actually take it all in. I am posting pictures that have a PG content because I don’t want my sisters to have to explain the facts of life to their kids (assuming that they may not have done “the talk” yet).

We felt a little battered by our drive. We knew that it would be at least a 6-hour drive to our next stop. However, the road was under construction and we took an hour to travel 20 kms. Road building here is interesting. They dug up the whole road and started to construct the new one. People did not stop using the road while it was being built. You just went around the workers and avoided the big potholes. We felt like we were doing off-road driving without the 4-wheel drive! Of course, not only did the driver have to deal with insane road conditions, he also had to manage a huge amount of traffic passing him in both directions and then his screen fogged up because it got colder after dark and he had no heater. We arrived shaken but intact.

The hotel was worth the drive. We are staying in a palace! Seriously, a palace owned by a Maharaja who still lives in one wing. The Prince of Wales stayed here! OK, that was 100 years ago, but it is spectacular. This is only the guesthouse. We will get to see the actual palace on January 3.