Orchha 1st May 2006

I didn’t sleep much last night because of the heat, which was stifling. I was wide- awake at 05:30 and decided to get up and have a shower and go down to the river to watch the sunrise. I got up had a shower, got dressed, put on my watch and noticed that it was 02:45, I had misread my watch in the dark! I got undressed again and tried to get back to sleep, but sleep wouldn’t come. I read until 05:00 and then went down to the river, I was obviously not the only one who couldn’t sleep, as there were dozens of people heading the same way (I take it they normally get up at this time unlike me).

I sat down on one of the big boulders on the riverbed, but people kept on coming over to say hello, and I wasn’t in the mood to answer the Usual Questions ™, so I had to get away from there. There is an ancient abandoned temple (as most of them are here in Orchha) right on the riverbank, so I went in there as Andy told me that you’re able to climb to the roof and very few people go there. I scrambled over some loose rocks and found the stairs up to the first level and sat there for a few minutes looking at people swim / bathe and wash their clothes in the river. I then located the stairs for the 2nd floor and started to ascend. I heard a high-pitched sound and felt two things knock into me, I nearly sh1t myself. I took out my torch and looked around, there were several bats clinging to the walls! I took the sensible option and found another staircase (thankfully bat free) as I didn’t want to pay another visit to the doc for further injections.

The view from the roof was spectacular. I could see across most of the town and had great views of the other temples, there were also hundreds of birds starting to wake. At one stage I counted eleven vultures on the temple domes / spires and there were dozens of green parrots flitting from tree to tree. Occasionally a vulture would fly from one dome to that of another temple, which was an amazing sight. I sat there for three hours and had to drag myself away to get some more water. I felt really privileged to be sitting so close to the vultures and parrots going about their morning business, and I did have to look around once or twice to see if Gandalf was in the vicinity. I was only briefly disturbed by four locals who were together after about two hours.

I went and got some breakfast when I finished at the temple and then went back to my guesthouse. After a couple of minutes chilling out, Rishi, knocked on my door and asked if he could play a game, so I gave him my ipod and he played with the games on that for a couple of hours while I chatted with Will and Liz.

We just tried to chill out for the rest of the day, which is not easy, when the temperature is pushing 40 degrees centigrade. The evening was spent at prayers in the temple by the market and stood back and listened to the chanting and singing – as nice way to spend an evening.