the journey to khajuraho

I'm in Khajuraho in Madhya Pradesh. The journey down here was a real pain in the arse. It had been supposed to be a seven hour train journey from Delhi to Jhansi and then a five hour bus ride from Jhansi to Kahjuraho. It turned into two trains, three buses, and a ride in a jeep, took 35 hours non-stop, and a near nervous breakdown on platform 1 at Kota station in Rajasthan. The problems began when my train, which left Delhi at 5.30am on Monday, was diverted west (it should have been going east) following a train derailment further down the line, and it was several hours before I realised it was going completely the wrong way and several more before I could actually get off.

I eventually got off at a place called Kota and went to the enquiries desk to ask how I could get back to my train destination (Jhansi). I was passed around six officials in different parts of the station all of whom gave me drastically different information. In the end, after losing it with station master, I just walked out of the station not caring anymore where the hell I went and got in an autorickshaw and asked to be taken to the bus station in the hope that (a) there was a bus station and (b) it might have buses to Jhansi. There was. It didn't. But they did have a bus to a small town called Shivpuri (about eight hours away), and the man selling tickets thought there might be another bus on from there on to Jhansi. It was my only option so I bought a ticket. The bus didn't leave until 9pm (it was now about 4.30pm) so I went and had my haircut opposite the station and then sat down until the bus came.

An uncomfortable night followed in the impressively hot and cramped bus. I sat next to a woman at the back who spent most of the journey puking out of the window, and the lack of leg room meant my leg were killing me all the way. All I saw through the night was darkness except for when we drove by a brightly lit pesticide factory.

We finally made it to Shivpuri in the early hours and I discovered to my relief that there was a bus on to Jhansi. I boarded this and it left at 6am. By now I was beginning to find it hard to stay awake but just about managed. This bus took about three hours and arrived at about 9am. The bus jerked to a halt as we arrived and I gashed my hand on a nail sticking out of the seat in front me. As I tried to get a couple of plasters across my knuckles a merciless tout came up to me and, unable to give me even a few seconds to try to stem the blood flow, tried to sell me a hotel room. I advised him to 'f*ck off.' He obliged.

Once no longer bleeding, I went into the ticket office and found that the first bus I could get to Khajuraho (my final destination) left at 11am and would take a final five hours. I bought a ticket and went and sat out it out on the bus station kerb now feeling completely numb. The bus got within 30 kilometres of Khajuraho and for no reason that I could discern I was transferred to an overfull 'share jeep' which finally got me to end point Khajuraho at 4.30pm. I'm not precisely sure of the time because I was mildly delirious. I checked into the Surya Hotel around 5pm and breathed a massive sigh of relief.

Really the time I've spent here has been spent recovering from getting here, and quietly wandering the temples. The temples at Khajuraho are famed for their erotic sculptures but in actual fact not many are erotic. They are attractive structures, not as large as I'd imagine they'd be, but really once you've seen one of them you've seen them all. Khajuraho is good in that it is sleepy and quiet, but there's been more hassle from tourist industry types than I'd expected and I just haven't been in the frame of mind to deal with it.

I'm moving on again to Varanasi this afternoon. This will be a long journey too. I'm going to see how I go but if I arrive as exhausted as I did to here I'm going to halt my itinerary for a few days just to rest, recover, and to become less irritable. We'll see - may be I'll be fine, there'll be good leg room on the bus, I'll meet someone nice, and I'll be ready to go when I arrive. Like I said, we'll see.