18th February 2014 (Day 10) Orchha

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Early in the morning, the bus dropped us near Orchha Fort and we walked along the road past stalls including this amazing display of pigments.

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Here we walk past a side-street in front of Ram Raja Mandir Temple.

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The fort is on an island.  Here I look back from the other side of the bridge towards the town and Laxminarayan Temple.

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Walking back after visiting the fort, I am at a similar position on the bridge but here a tractor is passing by with a probably empty trailer.

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A motorcyclist and his passenger emerges from a lane in front of Laxminarayan Temple.

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We boarded the bus again and were taken to a spectacular group of cenotaphs.  There are fifteen of the Bundela  Maharajas and members of their clan in the area.

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This is the cenotaph of Maharaja Sujan Singh, maharaja from 1653 to 1672.

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Most of the others I can’t specifically identify.  For example, I can’t quite read that sign.

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Pam and Jools taking a break.

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Vulture on the roof and vulture’s nest at bottom left, even with a roof.

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I took the opportunity to seek the view from the upper level of the Cenotaph of Maharaja Bhagawant Singh.  He was a minor who ruled under a regent but died after five years, ruling from 1684 to 1689.  This woman was at the other side of the ground level.

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From where she was standing, I could see another woman some distance away in the washing zone at the side of the river.

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And this is the view I saw when I climbed to the upper level.  The last members of the group are disappearing through the archway to the right.  I had to scramble after them.

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After a short bus journey, we stopped at the other end of the bridge across the Betawa River on the main road south from Orchha.  Here are people washing clothes and perhaps bathing.

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When a bus comes across the bridge, there’s no room even for a motorbike.  Here the woman is walking back and there was a family of three on the bike.  The most I saw on a bike was five, on one occasion all adults.  In two instances, there was a man with a large goat.

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Looking across the Betawa River, these are the cenotaphs we had just visited.

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The platform with the clothes draped on is where the lone woman was standing in the earlier image.

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Here is Brian and Christa and the assistant driver in front of our Toursit bus (signwriter’s typo).  Just as well it wasn’t a Tourstand bus.  All our buses in this part of the trip had assistant drivers who were required to perform tasks such as clearing a way for us out of a traffic jam.

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For the sublime to the ridiculous.  We are now on the road back to Jhansi, or maybe even in Jhansi, where we will catch a train back to Delhi.  Compared to the cenotaphs we just visited and the Jahangir Mahal, this becomes stranger the more closely you look at it.  It may as well be built of plywood and plastic (or perhaps is).

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I might be able to tell something of where we are from the road sign, except that it’s all in Hindi.

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Here we are waiting at Jhansi Station for our train to Delhi.  I saw one train depart with people hanging out the doors in third class.  I understand they don’t allow people to ride on the roof any more in India but do in Bangla Desh.  We were in first class with comfortable individual seats.  We received many small servings of hot food during the journey which was very good indeed.

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After Delhi, the group split up.  One half went to Varanasi and Kerala; our half went to Rajasthan.

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