Chittrakut

Finally getting around to posting this up. Spent most of the past week being sick by various means into various objects after eating various meals in Khajuraho. The internet access has been intermittent so I haven't had the chance to upload the photos, or the energy to get out of bed to go somewhere where I can...

So Chittrakut was a small town which was our stop after Allahabad to break up the trip to Khajuraho. It turned out to be a rather nice town, no pushy touts just locals who want to practice English. Not too crowded either.

The road there however was... Interesting. At one point the air got hotter, the trees got shorter or disappeared and the brown dirt turned red. A small patch of desert in this otherwise mostly hot part of northern India. There were a lot of roadworks on this stretch of road too which made for slow progress. It's not the main highway towards Delhi and it only seems to link up the tourist spots (and of course for the locals to use). 

In Chittrakut we stayed at the Tourist bungalow, a state run (I think?) series of hotels in the bit tourist spots. They had air conditioned rooms at least and it was one of those hot 40+ degree riding days after which it was required. And of course, this being a hotel in India they had grumpy staff working there. And they were overstaffed too. I think there were around 10 guests staying that night, but around 20 staff all wandering round doing nothing.

There were ghats in this town which are supposed to make it a smaller version of Varanasi. I've also since learnt that Ghat just means steps into water, or maybe just holy water.

Pig munchin on some garbage...

Brightly coloured dyes for your... Head dots (still don't know the name yet)

This guy just wanted us to take photos of his family, so we obliged. 

The Ghats! and boats, and people.

There are touts along here of course, trying to sell boat rides. But it seemed if one tried and failed to get business only one or two more might try, not everyone like in Varinasi.

People swimming in the murky water.

Chained up rabbit kept on deck of one of the boats. Most of them had rabbits.

Boats all lined up, rabbits in view.

 We were talking to a few locals for about an hour, they just wanted to practice English of course. One of them was at university doing and IT degree and wanted to get a high paid programming job here, which means about $500/month for them. He also wanted to move to Australia to get paid more but almost right out of uni. I told him to wait and try to specialize in something before trying to do that. Something like Oracle...

Boats at night.

In the morning we set off with about three different versions of the directions to Khajuraho. We crossed the river which was wrong, but we ended up at the Lord Rama hill.

The temple in the side of the hill.

 And then the rest of the day was spent riding through landscapes like this...

Dry and hot.

Look at all that dry.

Near Panna National Park, there were bits of green here.

See, some green, but still a lot of dry.

There was a lot of money spent on drinking water that day. I think I went through 5-6 Liters just in the time we spent riding.

Once I get through my photos from Khajuraho, then I can describe all the non-awesome touts that plague that city.