11 December to Orchha

Two photos taken from the bus.

Today we learned about the incarnations of Vishnu in preparation for seeing the palaces at Orchha.  Firstly Lakshmi was his wife.   He had nine incarnations:  fish, tortoise, wild boar, three-legged man, lion face with human body, Lord Rama, Lord Krishna and Lord Buddha.  Woops, I have only remembered eight.  It's all mighty confusing to non-Hindus but fascinating to this non-Hindu.  According to orthodox Hinduism, Buddha is an incarnation of Vishnu but this is not the belief of Buddhists.

I was not expecting what was waiting for us in Orchha.  There are four medieval palaces in the citadel complex built around the Rajah Mahal.  Orchha was formed by Maharaja Rudra Pratap Singh in 1501, on the Betwa River.  Construction of the Rajah Mahal was stopped by his death in 1531 and it was completed in the 17th century, by Madhukar Shah, the successor of Rudra Pratap Singh. The palace is organised around two courtyards and contains splendid murals which date from the 17th century. 

The Diwan-i-Aam where the king held his cabinet meetings.

Inside this palace there were amazing murals with the colours still well preserved.  They represent Vishnu in all his incarnations.  The king's wife left him because he liked hunting and she was a devout Hindu and abhorred killing of animals.  She built her own palace in view of the Rajah Mandir and visited him once a year but in the meantime he collected a few concubines.

The courtyard around which his concubines lived. As seems to be the pattern, he had secret passages connecting to the rooms so no woman knew who he was spending his time with. 

The Jahangir Mahal was built by Raja Bir Singh Ju Deo in the 17th century to commemorate the visit of Emperor Jahangir to Orchha.  It took 22 years to build.  Its strong lines are balanced by delicate chattris and trellis work, giving the effect of extraordinary richness.  Now here's some history:  "Bir Singh sought an alliance with Akhbar's son. Prince Salim, later to be known as Emperor Jahangir, and together they plotted and killed Abu'l Fazl one of Akhbar's chief ministers. The lovely Jahangir Mandir was built by Raja Bir Singh for his friend Jahangir when he visited Orchha. During Jahangir's reign Bir Singh rose to great prominence but fell from grace when he revolted against Jahangir's successor Shah Jahan (the builder of the Taj Mahal in Agra).  Bir Singh was defeated by Shah Jahan's son Aurangzeb, destined to become the next Mughal emperor."  So who can you trust?

Jahangir Mahal.

This palace was only lived in for one night.  It was gifted to Jahangir and he visited on his way to Lahore where he died.  Because it had been gifted, the practice was that a gift could not be taken back.

The entrance doors to this palace are spectacular.

Below the entrance is the building which housed the camels and the stairs were organised in such a way that there were step-offs at different levels:  the highest for people on elephants, the next level for those getting off camels, even lower for people on horses and then, of course, the ground level for people walking into the palace.

Camel stables.

A third palace is the Rai Parveen Mahal.  Rai Parveen was the beautiful paramour of Raja Indramani (1672-76) and was sent to Delhi on the arrogant orders of the Emperor Akbar, who was captivated by her.  She so impressed the Great Mughal with the purity of her love for Indramani that he sent her back to Orchha.  She was a poetess, musician and dancer.  The palace is a two-storeyed brick structure set in a garden.

The fourth palace was that of a prince. I got a bit confused when I started looking at my photos.  There is a story that the prince fancied Rai Parveen and dug a tunnel connecting his palace to hers so his father would not know.  The guide never finished this story.  One of the palaces has been converted into a hotel and restaurant and I believe it was the palace of the prince. 

The prince's palace now a hotel and restaurant.

The palace of Rai Paveen

The citadel with palaces from the town.

On our way to Orchha we called in at a factory where hand-made paper is produced as an industry to help widowed women.  They were making paper from rags as well as recycled paper and cardboard.  Many university and government certificates are printed by them and they also have a shop selling various craft items made from paper, of course.  

Squeezing the water out of the paper.

Vat of paper pulp.

At Orchha we stayed in permanent tents out the back of a hotel.  We were in view of the chattris or shrines to the royal family where a vulture pair had a nest.

The evening we arrived Steve and I walked to the bridge across the Betwa to watch the sunset.  There were quite a few people of like mind including a couple of "money saints"  (fakes dressed as Sadhus). 

Wood collectors returning loaded up and running the gauntlet with the trucks on the narrow bridge.

The shrines or chattris to the royal family and the tents we stayed in.

It is such a narrow one-way bridge.  When trucks came we had to stand still and hope they missed us and didn't toot their horns and give us a fright.  There were rocks below. 

 

When the stick gatherers made it to the bridge they stopped for a while as if taking a deep breath and then jogged across hoping not to meet a truck.  Once I saw a woman loaded up with sticks boldly walking in front of a constantly tooting bus but she held her ground. 

Chantelle being chased by a monkey interested in her plastic bag.  Her scream raised the hair on the back of my neck.  One of the money saints came to her rescue so they do do some good in this world. 

This is the narrow bridge from which we viewed the sunset. 

We were told this was the entrance to the palace built by the devout queen.  The Hindu temple where we attended a prayer service was through this gate.

At the prayer ceremony there was much chanting, bell ringing, incense smells, flowers in garlands, blessings, and little boys chasing each other in and out the worshippers.  After the prayer we went to the house of our guide where we had a cooking lesson.  The woman sat on the floor and demonstrated on a small two ring gas burner.  The lesson started with masala chai and covered several vegetable curries as well as a rice pulau, guava chutney and puris.  I must dig out the recipes and give them a try now that I'm home.  Some of us then had our hands and legs henna-ed for fun.  We realised then that this family was doing well out of G-Adventures but not so, others.  Our guide at the palaces was the husband, the wife taught us cooking, and the sister did the henna painting.  
 

What we learned to cook.

Several of us needed to find an ATM so we went to one only to find it was being serviced.  We were told there was another one up the road but when we found it, there was a huge trench dug in front of it extending for some distance along the street and there was a thin and narrow piece of iron across the trench.  It was a hole in the road, not a hole in the wall.  We had to wait until another day. 

The Hindu shrine beside our tent.  This type of shrine reminded me of how ancient this religion is.  Worship of a stone with some chalk markings, colourful powder and flower petals.

We stayed at the Orchha Resort Hotel.  The buffet lunch was quite special since we had had no break from curry/spices for nearly three weeks - it included sweets such as custard and profiteroles - for the total cost of 350 rups per person + a tip of 10%.

A mystery!!  One of our group listened to her i-pod before sleep and when she woke up in the morning, there was no sign of the earphone pods.   She thought it must have been ants but we suspected something rather like a rattus rat.  Monkeys bounced on tent roofs in the morning.

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