India

Monday 10/5/2009 - Ayurvedic Massage, Orchha

I woke up before our 8:15 a.m. alarm. We got up and dressed and went down to the breakfast buffet. We drank fresh sweet lime juice, and ate idly and sambhar, which the staff was all too eager to tell me (when they saw me scribbling down the names in my notebook) was a southern Indian dish, and poori, bhaji, and pakoda which are from northern India. The staff was extremely friendly and was always around to make sure that our every need was met. Mukul came down for breakfast just as Craig and I needed to leave to take our pre-massage showers. We wished him good morning and then headed back to the room.

We took quick showers and then headed downstairs, outside, and across the pool patio to the spa for our Ayurvedic massage (a technique developed in the Kerala region of southern India). Craig and I were each taken in to separate white tiled rooms.

My masseuse was a small young woman named Nishi. I don’t usually get massages. Although I enjoy them, I consider them an extravagance, and have only had one other professional massage in my life. But I know the drill for most typical, American, modest massages, where your body is draped in a towel, etc. I was a little bit taken aback here when Nishi indicated that I should take off all of my clothes except for my panties and sit in a chair. I’m not particularly modest, but I just wasn’t really sure what to expect. She stood behind me, took the ponytail out of my hair, and massaged my head and hair with oil. She pressed on my temples and then ran her thumbs down my cheeks. She massaged my ears and even my eyelids. There was a lot of pressure in her thumbs and fingers, and it felt very relaxing.

She then asked me to lay on the massage table on my back. Again, no modesty towel. She traced the striations of my muscles on my arms and legs, pulling my fingers and toes, bending my joints. It was so relaxing. The oils smelled nice and a fan was blowing on me. I then flipped over onto my stomach and she massaged my back. Although she was small, she had tricks to really massage me with a lot of pressure, such as bending one arm behind my back and rubbing my back with my own wrist. Before I knew it, time was up. I got back into my clothes feeling super limber and relaxed. I met Craig in the lobby and we compared notes as we headed back to the room. He had had a male masseuse and also an apprentice. The masseuse would massage one leg or arm, and then the apprentice would do the other. Other than the fact that he had two masseuses, his massage experiences was quite similar to mine.

We went back to the room and took showers to wash off the massage oil. We were completely relaxed and ready for the next part of our journey. We checked out of the hotel at 12:30 p.m., right on schedule. Craig exchanged some money at the front desk. While he was doing that, I went into a bar area where they had a scale model of the Khajuraho temples. It looked like it was carved from wood. When he saw me looking at it, an employee came in to turn on the lights for me. He informed me that it was actually made of Styrofoam. Amazing!

We were on the road by 12:50. The roads were paved for the most part and we were going through rural farmland in the state of Madhya Pradesh. We passed some storehouses where members of the community can store their crops in order to keep them safe from rats.

The word "Khajuraho" means “date palm”, and we saw many of these namesake trees along our ride. We noticed that the further we got from Khajuraho, road signs which were once in both Hindi and English were now strictly in Hindi. Butterflies fluttered past the car. Mukul told us that there are many teak trees found in these areas.

As we passed through rural areas, buildings would start getting closer together and we realized that we were approaching a town. We would never know what were going to see or how big the town would be, but we would keep our eyes peeled and observe the daily activities of the people that we would pass. There were dirt areas between the buildings and the road, and this was where vendors sold items from carts. Then the next thing we knew, the buildings were growing further apart again. We left the town behind, and we were back into rural land once again.

As we passed through one of these village called Chattupur, we noticed a man on a motorcycle carrying a goat onboard. You don't see that every day! Mukul bought us some locally grown bananas. He directed our attention to some nomads in tents on the side of the road. They roam the countryside stopping in towns and making iron tools which they then sell to local farmers.

We saw a sign for “Brain Computer” advertised on the wall, which made us smile. Medieval stone watch towers surveyed the countryside from hilltops. We saw banyan trees along the road. Then we passed through Newgong, where a military base is located. We saw women doing roadwork and Mukul explained the NREGA program (National Rural Employment Guarantee Aid), whereby rural women are guaranteed employment for 90 days on projects such as widening the road. We stopped to see some sesame plants that a man was transporting in an ox cart. Mukul showed us the inside of the seed pods.

Mukul pointed out many birds, including jungle babblers (which always congregate in groups of seven), blue bee eaters, and laughing doves. We passed a dam which had been built to save rainwater. We got on to a toll road and passed many stacks of kiln-fired bricks. Mukul mentioned that there is evidence of terra cotta work in India as far back as 3500 BC. Mukul bought some roasted peanuts from a vendor but was disappointed that they weren’t still warm. It would become a quest on this trip for Mukul to try to find the perfect fresh roasted peanuts. Abandoning the peanuts, he took some packets of “savories” out of his laptop bag – packets of salted peanuts and moong dal.

After driving for 168 km, we arrived in Orchha and checked in at the Amar Mahal Hotel. There was an army officers’ convention here tonight to celebrate Gunner’s Eve, so we were upgraded to suite rooms, as the army officers had the regular rooms booked. The hotel is built in the style of surrounding Bundelkhand architecture and was quite beautiful. We were walked through two courtyards to our lovely suite. Our suite was across a white and red checkerboard floored courtyard from Mukul's suite. We passed through scalloped archways onto a covered patio area with lawn furniture and entered the room. Our room had a main bedroom, a small nook with pillows for reclining, a dressing room with a desk, and a large bathroom. Our ceiling was painstakingly hand painted in elaborate Arabesque motifs. The floors were made of white marble, and there were miniature paintings hung on the walls. One corner of the bedroom had a couch and TV. There was a menu for the hotel restaurant, and it contained a funny poem about why animals are missing out because they don't drink alcohol. There was also an electric teapot for boiling hot water. It had a crack in it, though, so it spilled a bit whenever we tried to use it.

We went to the lobby to meet Mukul at 5:30. The hotel was swarming with army officers, and they were setting up for an elaborate private party in one of the hotel gardens. We wandered toward the garden and could see some medieval sikharas (a type of steeple found in Hindu architecture) in the distance. We walked out of the hotel grounds and Mukul bought some more roasted peanuts from a vendor with a push cart on the road. I saw a palace in the distance and walked over to a stone wall to try to get a good vantagepoint for a photo. I found myself staring down at an encampment of army personnel sitting under a large tent, surrounded by a convoy of trucks. Oops – definitely shouldn’t be photographing in that direction. I slowly put my camera down and backed away. Wow, we were probably in the most secure town in India on this night!

As we walked down the street, a cow followed us, but pretended that he wasn’t – each time we looked back he would be stopped, looking the other way, but mysteriously closer to us. We came upon a group of children who were playing a game where one child threw a ball at a stack of rocks. The other players would need to restack the toppled stones before getting tagged. We could have sat and watched their spirited game for hours, but there was more of the town to see.

Rudra Pratap, a Rajput chieftain of the Bundela dynasty, founded Orchha in the early 16th century on the banks of the Betwa River. Most of the early construction (including the city walls) was done by his successor, Raja Bhatri Chand. You could see remnants of old roads and water wells, and a half-buried shrine to Hanuman, the monkey god. A water well had a sign on it saying that it is maintained with the help of the German government.

Dusk was falling as we walked through the medieval town. It was really cool that people live and work in the shadow of these centuries-old sikharas and chhatris. Merchants' stalls lined the streets and wires provided electricity and light. It seemed slightly anachronistic to see a large group of people gathered on the opposite side of the street from a single TV. set up in one of the stalls. They were intently watching a Bollywood-style Hindu musical program as medieval city walls towered above them. We self-consciously walked between them and the TV, through some small gates which kept vehicles out of the center of town.

As we walked around, we saw temples and palaces perched on hilltops in the distance. The town really had the feeling of a secluded outpost. There were few tourists here. We had never heard of Orchha, and when we saw it on our itinerary, we hadn't known what to expect. This medieval town had a laid-back feel and it was nice and peaceful.

Though sellers approached us and offered to sell us a myriad of items, they weren't too pushy and we were comfortable interacting with them. Mukul bought a garland of flowers and gave it to us. We walked past a stall and I bought a wooden stamp to decorate your fingers with henna for 35 rupees (well, Mukul bought it since he had change). The shopkeeper also sold brightly colored kumkum powder and little brass lotus-shaped compacts to store it in, jewelry, and many different hand-carved henna stamps like the one I had bought.

After exploring the area, we sat at a table at a sidewalk café and I bought us each cold drinks (Fanta for us and water for Mukul). A man named Raghvendra came by and introduced himself to Mukul as a local guide. He wanted to work with Mukul, and after receiving his references Mukul hired him as a day guide for us tomorrow. It was starting to rain.

Suddenly, sparks flew as a motorcycle came skidding down the street laying on its side several feet in front of us. Two young men tumbled off. It was quite a spectacle and immediately people ran over to help. Both men were alright, and it seemed that one had been teaching the other to drive. The wet roads combined with a cow patty in the road may have contributed to the accident. Within moments police had arrived at the scene and were yelling at the driver. Although we can't understand Hindi, we had a fair idea that he was berating them for going too fast for the current conditions.

By now, it had gotten dark. Mukul was hoping that the rain would stop, as Orchha also had a sound and light show in the evenings, and he had wanted to be able to take us. While we were seated at the cafe, the power went out in town, so that the only lights were from people’s generators.

At 7 o'clock we walked to the Shri Rama Raj temple in the dark. The temple was originally built as the queen's palace by the Bundela dynasty in the 16th century. Bundela king Madhukar Shah was a devotee of Lord Krishna while his queen Kunwar Ganeshi was a devotee of Lord Rama (an avatar of Vishnu). The queen wanted to make a temple for Rama in Orchha, and she traveled to Ayodhya to fetch Lord Rama. He eventually appeared to her in the form of a small child. Rama agreed to go with her to Orchha under the following conditions: that the queen must bring him to Orchha on foot and that once he is settled in one spot in Orchha, he will not be moved. While she brought the god with her to Orccha, the king began construction of Chaturbuj Temple, which would be a new temple to house Lord Rama. He positioned it so that the sanctum sanctorum would be visible from the queen's bedroom window in Raja Mahal. When she arrived with the idol of Lord Rama, the temple was not yet complete. She put the idol in her kitchen temporarily. When the temple was complete, she tried to move the idol there, but it refused to move. The kitchen was converted into Shri Rama Raj temple, and the new Chaturbuj temple was dedicated to Lord Vishnu.

In deference to Hindu belief in the sanctity of cows, we had to leave all leather items (shoes and belts) outside the temple. They also wanted me to leave my entire bag, though it was made of canvas. As it held our passports, money, camera, etc. (and Mukul said that his shoes were once stolen at this very temple), I couldn’t leave it unattended.

So Mukul kindly stayed behind with my bag, and Raghvendra led Craig and me into the temple. We passed into a courtyard and rang a bell as we entered. People were congregated near a door at the front of a courtyard. We walked through puddles on the marble floor in our bare feet to go towards the front. They opened the door and we could see the shrine inside: a Rama statue and some lamp flames. People started chanting and you could feel the religious zeal. It was too crowded up front so we went to the back and stood under the eaves for protection from the rain. Before we were to leave, he led us to the front so that I could give my flower garland as an offering.

People in the front didn’t want to move an inch, even for a second, but eventually we squeezed through. I placed my offering in front of the shrine, and we walked back along the perimeter, passing a shrine to Hanuman, the monkey god. We went outside and put our shoes back on. Mukul handed me my bag and then made a quick trip inside. He re-emerged, and then we walked back to the sidewalk cafe where we had sat at the table. It was really raining now. Mukul got on his phone. About 2 minutes later a car pulled up, and we realized that it was Prakesh. “This is what’s called logistics!” Mukul announced. Indeed! We hopped into the dry car. “What, did you think I was crazy making you walk in the rain?” Mukul asked.

The sound and light show was canceled due to the weather, so we were driven back to the hotel. The weather also put the brakes on the outdoor party that the army officers were supposed to have back at the hotel, so they were mingling in the corridors around the courtyards, with a small radio playing music. We went into the dining room. Like the guest rooms, it was elaborately hand-painted. They were having a buffet tonight. After looking at the offerings, Mukul noted that there wasn’t very much vegetarian fare, so he got them to make him an eggplant dish to supplement the buffet. We started out with lemon and coriander soup, which was absolutely delicious. We then went to the buffet and loaded up on pudeena raita, jeera rice, mashroom [sic] peas curry, nav ratani korma, mutton rogan josh, murg kalimiro, paneer tikka masala, and baingan kharbata. For dessert we had phirini, a very rich delicate vanilla ice cream, and Kashmiri apples.

Over dinner, Mukul told us all about his son Sukumar’s upcoming wedding. It will be a three day affair with around 1000 guests, and Sukumar will ride in on a white mare. It would take place in February, and Mukul invited us to attend. The idea thrilled us and our minds started spinning; was there any way that we could possibly make it back to India in just a few months' time?

After we finished our tasty meal, we retired to our rooms at 10 o'clock. I wrote in the journal and we sent a text message to Steve. We were delighted when he texted back immediately. We don't spend money on expensive cell phone plans, but were still able to keep pretty connected with the other side of the world in real-time for the cost of a couple of text messages. We told Steve about our adventures thus far, and that we had just been invited to a Hindu wedding. After finishing writing in the journal, we texted goodnight to Steve and then went to bed at 11:30.

View Larger Map Orchha