After our utterly fabulous stay in Alipura, our next stop is a small place called Orchha, set on the banks of the Betwa River. It’s a short drive of around 90 mins, which is great as it means we don’t have to get up at the crack of Dawn! 😁
Just before reaching Orchha we have a stop at a paper making factory, another of the projects supported by G adventures helping local tribal women.
The paper is made using recycled clothing and wood pulp. The process is very clever and the end result is lovely thick parchment like paper.
We stayed in a smallish home stay/hotelin Orchha which was lovely. Some of the group did an optional cooking class and others, including myself opted to stay at the hotel and have a spa treatment! I had a fabulous reflexology massage on my rather dry and grubby feet! 😳😍
We were due to have a 2 night stay in Orchha but as we now have to fly to Varanasi we are only staying 1 night, this means a full day. After our treatments we were off out to walk through the town and visit Orchha Palace. Another beautiful Mughal building. After this we visited Vir Singh Deos Mausoleum and gardens, these were lovely, the gardens were particularly nice, very peaceful. The lovely gardener gave us all a red rose to put in our hair! 🌹❤️
From here we went down to the river to watch the sunset. The river was quite wide, fast flowing and busy! People bathing, washing clothes, picnicking, walking and relaxing. The sunset was pleasant, the smell not so much. 😬
We had a quick chance to freshen up before our evening visit to the large Ram Raja Temple for a ceremony. It was packed and pretty intense, but not too scary! All in all a full on day, but great.
Orchha was an interesting and not too busy place, which I enjoyed visiting.
We left early the next morning to head back to Khajuraho to fly to Varanasi.
We seem to always be arriving in places at the same time as lots of VIPs!
The airport at Khajuraho is small but we were there at the same time as the President, Droupadi Murmu and the Chief Minister, Dr. Mohan Yadav, who we saw walking through the airport. (With a big security detail!)
This meant that security was incredibly tight and took ages to go through, my carry on bag was searched, and I had to empty it as I had a small purse holding my keys in, which were metal and showed up on the scanner, which I had completely forgotten about!
The President was apparently in the area to officiate at a huge mass wedding event. I think I’ve mentioned that it’s wedding season here in India at the moment and this mass wedding event is for people who can’t afford a big private wedding, so therefore they do a group one. It’s no doubt couples from the lowest caste, Shudras, which is the caste that the President herself came from.
Our flight was great, on Indigo Air, on time, nice big comfy seats. Very nice.
We arrived in Varanasi on 26th of February. This is also the last day of the Kumbh Mela festival.
The Kumbh Mela Festival has attracted approximately 660 million visitors during its 6 weeks! This is an insane number of people! To put it into perspective that is nearly 10 x the population of the UK! 😳😳
Many of the people visiting the last days of Kumbh Mela were then making their way to Varanasi for the Mahashivratri Festival. This is a very important festival celebrating Lord Shivas celestial union with Goddess Parvati. The Vishwanath Temple in Varanasi is the epicentre of these celebrations.
I think I’m going to leave it there for now, as I feel that Varanasi deserves its own blog!
Books Read.
The Wrong Hands. Mark Billingham. The 2nd Detective Miller Novel. I really enjoyed it.
The Lost Past of Billy McQueen. Neil Alexander. An enjoyable read.
Have a great week everyone.
💙🩷🩵❤️🧡💜💚
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