Mad Sunday - Orchha 30th April 2006

At the Isle of Man TT races there is a certain Sunday that the racetrack is open to all and sundry and as there are no speed limits outside of the main towns, the day is known as Mad Sunday. There are usually a couple of tourists / riders killed every year, mostly German for some reason. I discovered today that Orchha has something similar.

Today there were two hundred and one weddings in the town. No sh1t. I have come to love Orchha for its unimposing style, friendly locals, and lack of tourists – that was all thrown out the window today. Someone had told me that the weddings were taking place and gave me the location, it was a couple of km’s outside the town so I took my motorbike and tried to find where it was all going down. As soon as I got outside the guesthouse I needn’t have worried about not finding the wedding location as the street was jammed full of tractors pulling trailers full of people, buses, trucks, cows / ox pulling cart loads of people, tuk – tuk’s overloaded with people (some even standing on the rear bumpers), overloaded cars, off roaders, motorbikes, bicycles and hundreds of people walking. It was chaos. It took me nearly half an hour to get the couple of km’s and there was a sea of people spilling from all directions. It was a really stressful ride, as I had to concentrate on dodging all of the above vehicles using any space on the road to make forward progress. It was too crazy to hang around there and I wasn’t sure if I could go into the temple anyway, so I headed back to the town to get some lunch.

The town was over run with Indian tourists and they were beeping their horns at every opportunity and throwing rubbish anywhere and everywhere. My usual quite restaurant was overtaken by them as well, so I just had a sandwich so I could get out of there as soon as possible. While I was sitting there a big off roader pulled out blasting everyone with it’s bloody horn, and seven guys jumped out of if. It was hilarious, they were dressed as though they had just returned from a Saturday Night Fever convention. One of the guys was wearing black stone wash denim jeans, they were so tight that he probably had to be poured into them, and to go with this he was wearing a bright red shirt with big collars and a really naff pattern stitched on the back of it in black thread. They were all holding mobile phones and came into the restaurant and ordered ice-cream and stood around posing for ten minutes before getting back in to the off roader and leaving us in peace.

I was about to head off and I bumped into Andy, he updated me on the football scores and I went back to the guesthouse then, as I had to give the kid in the guesthouse a computer lesson at 14:00. The kid and his sister turned up at about 14:15 and said; “sorry, sleeping” and I asked him what he wanted to do. He chose to do more Photoshop, so I let him play around with three photographs over the course of an hour and I’d help him when he got stuck, I’m surprised how much he remembered from his first “lesson”. He then wanted to play a game, and the only games I’ve got on my laptop are Sodoku and chess and he said that he knew how to play chess. And sure enough he managed to beat the computer on his first go (I only gave him a bit of a help when he asked), he then went and got a friend and they played a game against each other. I was then offered a ride on the kid’s bicycle! An honour indeed. I had to decline though, as I wanted to get down to the market and catch the vultures (well, not literally catch them as that would be a little bit stupid) as they roosted.

I got down there and bumped in Titto and he wanted me to go down to his restaurant, I told him that I probably wouldn’t be popping down today as I’d arranged to meet Will, Liz and Andy for dinner. I went into the temple and there were a couple of guys hanging around near the entrance, two of them followed me in. I took out my camera and one of them came over and asked me if I had a ticket, I told him that I didn’t know you needed one. He told me that it was twenty rupees entrance fee and thirty rupees for the camera and that I could give him the money. I asked him if he had a ticket on him and he said, “no, just give me the money, will be ok”, I told him that would be fine as soon as he shows me his identification, which, surprise surprise, he didn’t have. I couldn’t be arsed arguing with him and wasn’t 100% sure that the temple was free (it’s abandoned, so there may be a fee for conservation work) so I got out of there. I bumped into Will and Liz in the square and they told me that they had never been asked for tickets and as far as they knew it was free. They were a bit upset that this type of thing is creeping in Orchha, as it had always been a hassle free town.

Will had a good story about something that happened earlier that afternoon. Him and Andy were sitting having a chai near the temples and they heard an argument break out beside them. When they looked over there was about six Eunuchs (caste of hermaphrodites) shouting at each other and they ended up being about two foot away from Will. One of them then pulls up his / her Sari and gives will and Andy an eye full of something that I’m not going to describe. Let’s just say it wasn’t a pleasant sight by all accounts.

We met Krishna (18 month old kid) and his sister and father, Krishna is a blonde Indian kid (the only one I’ve seen) and he has the dark make up around his eyes. Liz knows the sister pretty well and I’d taken some photos of them the night before, but as soon as they seen me they wanted more photos taken. Queue and endless succession of kids pursuing me around the square, wanting to have their photos taken. Not just kids mind, one elderly man who was with his family, kept on calling over for me to take their photo. It took me over ten minutes before I could put my camera away, so much for having to ask permission to take photos of people! Will ended up calling me the Pied Piper as everywhere I went I was pursued by the kids wanting more photos! I’m going to get some of them printed and give them to them before I leave town (when ever that will be).

We then went into the temple at 20:00 for prayers and after that we had something to eat. I had a lovely Thali, the nicest I’ve had in ages and washed it down with a mango shake and a couple of cups of masala tea. The “love cow” popped by, but again paid me no attention and this time nuzzled up to Liz, I feel really rejected!