Orchha

After having a fun week of being sick in Khajuraho it was time to move to the next destination on the tourist trail, Orchha.

Orchha was another 170km along the national highway 75 a mostly uneventful riding day. Well uneventful in the way that every day on the road you are dodging traffic, cows and goats. But the closer to Delhi you get the better the roads become, there might be more traffic but there's less potholes.

Once in Orchha we had no idea where to stay. A lot of places you ride into first to see where you can park the bike. We looked at one guesthouse in the market area and then they told us they had another hotel just down the road where we could park, so we went and looked there. Nice big clean new rooms with air conditioning, which we got the price down to 700R/night!

Welcome to bike parking inside the hotel!

The brick my bike DESTROYED while getting in.

We were only going to stay the one night, but after going over the lonely planet it seemed like there was a bit more to see in this small town. So the next morning we set out to Jehangir Mahal.

Across the channel to the Raj Mahal and Jehangir Mahal

Oh and a wider view... The locals just dump their garbage over the edge of the wall here... There's a lack of care about how the place looks all over India.

Inside the Raj Mahal.

In the middle of Jehangir Mahal.

Mindbending 360degree panorama from the middle.

Angry canon.

Elephants! And Nandi!

Looking back to the main part of Orchha.

Looking North.

Looking East

Looking South towards the river.

More doorways.

From the top.

This temple was fun to climb through! Lots of little passageways and stairs. Only a few doors were closed off. It was like real life Prince of Persia, only I didn't have to jump over any spikes or drink health potions (does beer count?).

Then it was over to the Raj Mahal next door.

Some of the painted ceilings in the entrance 

Inside, looking very Quake levely.

More painted ceilings.

More rocket jumping fun.

Elephant painting.

Kids getting some water.

After the mahal's, it was a quick trip down to look at the river.

The ghats, and looking down towards Chhatris.

Local washing her clothes.

Different coloured powders.

After that excursion it was time to retreat to the air conditioned room until the afternoon when it cooled down a bit. Then we headed over to Chaturbhuj Temple to have a look.

Cow munchin on garbage.

Looking up.

When we were outside this strange man kept waving for us to come over. So I did, and then he unlocked a door and took us to the top of this temple to have a look around. We weren't sure if this was normal practice...

The top.

Vultures sitting on the top.

Another vulture.

This was the crazy guy.

Looking back inside the temple.

Looking over to the mahal's

Once we got back down to the bottom we paid the guy for taking us up. But apparently during the day it's free and they just lock the door at 6pm, he opened it just for us to go have a look around.

The next morning we went over to the mahals again because there was a place to have breakfast, but more importantly they had free and open wifi...

Parked in the middle.

Then it was the attempted run to Agra! Except, in Gwalior the suspension on the Vespa broke again. Again, it was lucky and we were just down the road from a shop that could fix it up. We booked into a hotel for the night in Gwalior and would continue to Agra the next day.