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Varanasi, Delhi and the end

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 March 27th - Thursday I spoke in an earlier post about street widening and how they simply remove the front rooms. Well here's what that looks like. We were picked up at 5:30am for a sunrise cruise along the Ganges and joined by a local guide.  Cars are not allowed in the old part of town, so we parked about 1km away and walked.  Many thousands of people come here everyday to worship and/or bathe in the river and the streets were very full.  We wound our way through the hordes stopping to be blessed by a Yogi. He was extremely flexible and sat with the soles of his feet touching and up under his chin. We continued down towards the bank before climbing aboard a boat.  The cruise was pretty peaceful and the buildings were lit very nicely by the rising sun.  It was fascinating watching the people bathing. We were on the boat for about an hour before returning to the dock.  Our guide then took us through a number of back streets, showing various sites, bu...
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The journey continues

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  March 24th - Monday Picked up at 9:00am - no surprise there. We had the full day in Khajuraho and went first to the 'Western Temple Complex'.  This area has 7 major temples and a few minor ones and they were very different to others we had seen. They were Hindu temples dating back to between 800 and 1000 CE (CE means 'common era', the newer way of saying AD and BCE is Before Common Era or BC) The carvings on these temples were extremely intricate - and at times extremely erotic. Aparently the temples were inhabited by bachelors and the sculptures helped to teach them the 'worldly role of housekeeper', so Karma Sutra poses were depicted. They were very detailed! We spent 2 hours here before moving onto the Jain temples.  This particular group of temples again date back to the 1st Century but more recently are dedicated to 'Digambara'  This religion refuses to eat anything grown underground, so no potatoes, garlic, onion etc. They also reject things f...
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The Taj - and other places

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 March 21st - Friday We left Ranthambore at 9:00am heading for Agra. Along the way we drove on a recently opened privately run expressly, which was quite the experience.  Tuk tuks and motorbikes are not allowed and there were no cows. This meant the speed limit on the smooth 4 lane road was 120, quite an improvement on the normal 80. Jeet did say it costs 4 times the Government toll roads, but it was much better. After about 2 hours we stopped at Chand Baori stepwell. I had wanted to see this for many years and wasn't  disappointed.  It was built around 900BCE and is 30 metres deep with 13 levels of steps, making it one of the oldest and deepest in India. There was fencing around the top stopping you from walking down, but that meant nobody was in our photos so it was probably better. A few more hours down the road we came to Fatehpur Sikri. This group of buildings was originally a city and dates to the 1500's. The red sandstone of the buildings looked quite amazing ...
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