2012-02-16
Got an early start this morning driving towards Khajurao, the ancient temple complex and a star tourist destination in India. The road was excellent, undivided one lane but smooth and not much traffic. Driving on the Indian highways is like a study of Chaos theory. Anything can happen any time and seemingly randomly. I counted things like women crossing carrying loads of wood for cooking, kids running across, monkeys jumping in and out, cows , goats, dogs, loaded trucks passing from the wrong side, men on the bicycles, girls going to school on bicycles and all present speed bumps and illegal toll booths. All these but still we moved along ( I wonder if there is an underlying simple set of rules that covers this chaos and the driver follows that)
We stopped at the town of Meyher where there is a powerful temple of “Mother Sharda”. Our friends wanted to visit it and we thought it will be fun and it was. Sharda is the name of goddess Saraswati . Saraswati is the goddess of wisdom and is the wife of Brahma , the creator. She does not have many temples neither does Brahma( I guess the wisdom is not as important as the wealth J and it is more important to please the guy who takes care of day to day things ( Vishnu and his many incarnations) than the creator who creates and then sleeps for billions of years .
The Temple was up on a hill and had a modern day convenience od the tram carrying people up and down. IT was crowded as all temples are in India but was clean because they were strict about nOT EATING And throwing trash around.
On wards towards KHajuraho, we passes the city Panna which is famous of the diamond mines but we did not buy any instead we saw the sign for PAndav caves. We decided to check it out and it turned out to be a gem. This is where the Pandavs were supposed to be hidden for one year. If you are not familiar with the epic MAHABHARATA may be a very brief lesson is required. This is a long epic story full of lessons of life, politics and good vs bad battle. This is where in the final war, Lord Krishna gave his sermon to Arjun ( it is the famous GEETA , sort of bible for hindus) . Basically, this took place about 5000 years ago when the two sets of cousin in the kingdom in north India gambled and the good guys lost. As the part of the bet , the good guys, Pandavs , had to go to the jungles for twelve years and for one year hide somewhere so no one could find the, This is where they HID. The place is beautiful with water fall , canyon and the caves. Great place to hide.
More drive …finally reached Khajuraho around 6pm. More on Khajuraho tomorrow but it looks like a big Tourist place, fist thing wesaw was hotels like, Radisson, Hyatt and lot of Japanese and American tourists. It looks like any other place in the west. Good night from the place of 85 temples from 9th century….saroj
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