Khajuraho

This is us on the balcony of our lovely hotel, we had a breathtaking view of the temples.

Jason is hung-over, and is honestly having a good time squinting in the sun.

We were looking for somewhere exotic to spend Christmas, but being in India, we had to settle for somewhere erotic instead.

The temples were built by the Chandela dynasty which survived for five centuries before falling to the Mughal onslaught. The temples were made in just a hundred years. (AD 950 to 1050). There were originally 85 temples and now only 22 exist.

They are very interesting, and quite saucy as you can see to the right.

It is a mystery as to why they were built in such an isolated place and so quickly. Little is known about how they were built, but it looks like it could have been fun!

The shagging just goes on and on.

How do I (Jason) get invited to one of these parties. No one ever seems to know where they are?

A smaller party adorns the Kandariya Mahadev.

None the less it still looks like a good party.  

Jason's favourite is not the horse shagging, but rather the wife's reaction in the background.

No wonder Hindu society is about arranged marriages and women covered from head to toe by Saris. 1,000 years ago they were going berserk and they are still suffering the backlash.

Vishnu's mount is a boar.

If you look closely you can see the hundreds of carved tiny figures that decorate the boar. We are trying to forget the fact that our computer did weird things with all our photos of this place, and we no longer have them.

Nandu the bull, is Shiva's mount. Shiva is one of the 3 main gods in Hinduism but it didn't stop us from enjoying the double entendre of "Mount". It was HARD to get our minds out of the gutter when we were bombarded by this much smut.

We had Christmas here, and we tried all the $100 US a night hotels in town for Christmas dinner. They came up with Chicken Jalfrezi instead of turkey, so we returned to our favourite and considerably cheaper restaurant for chicken, chips, boiled veg and pumpkin soup. We closed our eyes and pretending the chips were roast tatties and the pumpkin soup was gravy. The beer and the bottle of wine definitely helped with this exercise. We ordered more food than we could possible eat to ensure we suffered extreme discomfort on the way to our room. Just like a real Christmas we retired stuffed to the gills and a little tiddly.

In-between looking at 1,000 year old porn, Khajuraho offers ample opportunity to be stalked. You might be stalked to buy postcard, statues, books, or whatever.

Or in cases of extreme luck, a local might befriend your boyfriend at a temple and suggest he goes into the sanctum to see the deity, while he retreats to try and snog Claire. He was slapped pretty hard and Claire has since received another lesson on punching.

The weirdest bit is, that the said sex-offender stood his ground as if trying to understand what he had done wrong.

Urban myth suggests that some 300 million Indian men won't ever get laid as there aren't enough women in the country to go round.

We took a cyclo to explore the Southern and Eastern temples. It wasn't that far but our cyclo driver was no spring chicken, and Jason spent a lot of time pushing the cyclo or driving it himself.

Jason only drove for 5 minutes or so before a nice Indian man in a big jeep ran us off the road and into a thorn bush. This was a nice reminder that the Caste system is alive and well, and it is still 'OK' to kill people who appear poorer than you are.

It was however, nice to be in the country, and we found these chaps picking chillies in a field.

The Eastern temples were Jain in origin and thus appeared a little more tasteful. This Apsara (dancer / nymph) is painting her feet or removing a thorn.

The mid rift of this soldier shows the severed head he has removed from an enemy in one hand and his own head that also been removed between his legs.

Repair work... two words so readily misunderstood and almost never seen in India.

This man is 15 metres above us and lowering down buckets of bricks that he regularly drops. We left shortly after this fearing for his faculties, and our lives.

The working Jain temple was a good reminder of that most endearing of Jain traits: going naked. These accomplished priests are seen here posing to hide their tackle. The guy on the right is being more successful than the guy on the left who whilst investing in a huge garden has failed miserably to cover the cucumber patch.