It's getting increasingly difficult to encapsulate everything that I've seen and experienced so far into coherent sentences. I've waited a long while, and still, I am dreading every single second of this post because I really haven't figured out how it's going to go. Anyway, this one is about two drizzly days and one stormy night in the small but touristy town of Orchha, once the princely state of central India, whose name translates to "hidden place".
Everything about my arrival, from the hazy overnight train journey to the whirlwind series of events that lead to my climbing into an overflowing local bus, was so surreal that it felt like my destination existed in a completely unimaginable dimension. After hassling with the rickshaw drivers for a fair price, reaching the city bus stand and trudging through the chaotic and muddy mess in search the correct bus, and finally sticking with my guts about the right bus despite the incessant Hindi-ramblings of the driver who was likely tipped off by the rickshaw drivers to kick me off, I was on an emotional high.
It was only when the bus pulled out of the lot onto the main road that I started to relax. And once I did, I realized that my throat was raw from screaming over the traffic in all my dealings just minutes before. I had done all this for 240 rupees; by opting for the 10 rupee bus ride instead of the 250 rupee auto rickshaw ride, I saved a whopping 6 dollars! I thought that was quite the feat.
After twenty minutes on the bus, with my knees wedged up against the seat in front of me, we entered an arched gate and a mother pointed out the window and said to me, “Orchha, Orchha”. I got the hint and quickly climbed my way over a pile of duffel bags and packages, reaching the doors just as the driver halted the bus. I followed the one main road in the tiny village in search of a guesthouse. Shop and restaurant owners lining the road hollered for my attention while empty stone palaces loomed in the distance. Clouds were beginning to roll in and I got the feeling that the next two days were going to be very different from what Google Images told me.
By the time I found a room and dropped off my bags, the sky had already darkened and every surface was stained with rain. I decided to walk towards Betwa River for that postcard view of the palaces despite the weather.
At the Betwa, a few local tourists were sitting on the rocks chatting and playing with water. A group of Sadhu were bathing and pooping on the opposite shore. Some were relaxing by the bridge but wouldn't let me photograph them without money.
I gave this one two rupees but he didn't seem happy. Appalled, I just walked away. It seemed like the locals here have seen too many foreigners come through town.
For such a small place, Orchha was full of visitors, the foreigner to local ratio was higher here than anywhere I had been so far. The constant touts and begging was significantly more aggressive. I knew Orchha would be incomparable to Agra or Delhi in this regard, but measured against Bombay, where no one gave a crap, or Bhopal, where visitors were few (due to false assumptions about the dangerous after-effects of the 1984 gas accident), this kind of attention was unprecedented for me.
Despite all this, Orchha was still charming.
By dusk, I found myself in the completely empty Jahangir Mahal without paying the entry ticket. I wasn't sure if the place was closed or closing, but I just decided to continue on until someone stopped me. The palace was huge and full of hidden stairwells that lead to the upper terraces. It didn't take long for me to start feeling a little anxious to leave though. The overwhelming quiet and the blackened sky was plenty inspiration for me to quickly get my ass out of there.
My worst apparition came true when I got the the main doors, I was of course, locked in. It was one of those times when you know something bad is going to happen, but you foolishly go on to challenge its likelihood anyway. Yes, I felt like a complete idiot. After 5 minutes of fruitless yelps for help, I was planning my route of escape. Climbing out of this 3-storey building was almost impossible but I was not going to spend my night here with the monkeys.
Just as I was going for the stairs up to the roof, a voice from the other side called to me. Feeling like it could be the voice of an angel, I ran towards him. It was the night watchman, and he was laughing while he unlatched the wooden doors open. I leaped out like a caged animal and thanked him endlessly.
The rest of the night was a stark contrast to the events that unfolded during the day. I met a fellow traveler at a popular restaurant and attempted to tell them him my story in French, I failed at that and we resorted to English while dining on some spaghetti, eggplant, butter chapatis, and sweet lassi. We shared more travel stories over some local milky desserts wrapped in a page of a math textbook. 3 Indian joints later, we found ourselves walking down the empty main road before suddenly being pulled into a jumpin' wedding procession for a wild dance-off.
We ended the evening back at the river, and everything became calm and muted. Back in my room, I fell soundly asleep to the pattering rain.
The next day was a whole new experience with whole new encounters. I spent the day with Carly and Kim, who started out as complete strangers but ended up sharing their most intimate stories in the span of just 8 hours. I met a middle-aged English woman, Didi, and her Indian husband of two years at their cafe, and learned about their struggle as a couple in India (involving unapproving locals and outrageous dealings with crooked police officers). The details of these people's stories were unimaginable to me and I did not want to ever be in the position to relate.
In the last hours I had left, I wandered through town in an estranged state. Somehow, it felt like my time in Orchha, with its ghostly palaces and supposed isolation, was a completely bazaar dream with random occurrences that I can't even begin to extract any meaning from.
When it was time to catch my train to Varanasi, I was eager to leave and anxious to wake up.
