February 23, Madhya Pradesh, India The further I venture from oversized, congested Indian cities, the more pleasant life becomes. Out in the country, the midday air is clear and dry, with wide open spaces of golden agricultural fields touching the edges of a pale blue sky. In small towns with packed dirt roads and ramshackle marketplaces, you become less wary of what people are really up to. That’s what eventually drives travelers from India — the incessant hustle and trickery. Unfortunately, there is no escaping the poverty and filth, and it takes half the day to find a semi-clean café to eat in. I always carry water and canned fish just in case, but, still, the abundance of animal dung and raw sewage is a constant reminder disease is never far away. My gps memory chip only stores coordinates and way-points for inter-provincial highways and major cities, so the best places to visit seldom appear on the screen. Much is left to chance. Orchha is an out-of-the-way village with more decaying palaces than hotels, and unless you know where to look, difficult to find. To those on their way to somewhere more important, it’s just another detour on a deteriorated asphalt road, but to Hindu pilgrims it’s home to the sacred Ram Raja Temple. There’s no sign at the turnoff, in the midst of a dry woodland forest; the isolated outskirts of Orchha appear without warning. By Indian standards, its two-story run down hostels are overpriced. Even then, nine bucks rents a sparse room with an ancient tv pulling in BBC News and a bucket of hot water in the morning. As elsewhere, there is a dusty blanket and bottom sheet that gets changed once a week regardless of how many guests have used the room. But it’s been awhile since I’ve woken up itching, so I’m okay with it. Instead of another evening of fending off hustlers and rickshaw drivers, tonight, amiable locals provide a chair on the hostel porch to sit and watch a show. As rows of mobile food stalls and wooden souvenir stands button up for the night, a variety of wandering animals converge. Leftover rice, vegetables and rotting fruit are tossed into the street for strays and sacred cows to scrounge and feast on. Irate Brahma bulls with broad, convincing horns poke and moan at barking dogs while wily alley cats sneak scraps from behind. It’s like a scene from a show on Animal Planet. Up until now, I’ve had regular access to money; even small cities have ATMs to spit out a few days’ worth of rupees when needed. So while Orchha is out of the way, I assumed there would be at least one in town. There wasn’t. With travel so cheap in India, your money tends to last. It’s easy to forget to resupply. After pre-paying my hotel bill, I discover I am nearly broke. Being cashless in India is a dodgy proposition. An old wooden building with a broken-down metal door serves as both post office and village bank. An ancient rotary-dial telephone connects them to Delhi. From behind a paper-strewn desk, an apologetic manager tells me the nearest cash machine is 10 miles back, in Jhansi. I can either spend an hour backtracking at sundown or eat my last can of tuna for dinner and have enough rupees for bottled water on a morning ride to my next destination of Khajuraho. As a precaution, I always keep hundred-dollar bill folded in the back of my wallet or emergency traveler’s checks glued behind my helmet lining, but this situation hardly warrants pillaging that stash. For now, it’s a full moon in Southwestern Asia, and the muddy backstreets of Orchha are lined with two-room stone-tile houses leaking wafts of incense and sinus-burning spices — pleasant confirmations of how far I have come and have yet to go on this bizarre journey into the landscape of humanity. With my senses buzzing, it’s time to wander strange neighborhoods and see who invites me for tea.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 14:46:38 +0000
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