Tyger, Tyger
According to our guidebook, Bandhavgarh National Park is the best place in India to spot a tiger, one of the world's most endangered big cats. And based on the map, it looked like it wasn't too far off our proposed route through the north of the country. In reality, getting there required a 12-hour train ride in an overcrowded, roach-infested Sleeper car to the town of Umaria, where we then had to hire a car to drive us the 30 kilometers to the park village, Tala, since it was past midnight by then and the buses had stopped running.
We traded up to an unheated, mildly ant-infested room at Tala's cheap hotel, where we squeezed in four hours of sleep before our sunrise tiger safari was to begin. It was dark and really, really cold in the back of the open safari jeep as we bounced off to the park gate, which brought back happy memories of many such mornings in Africa.
During the four hours of our safari, we saw many nice things. Like the lovely park landscape.
All this tasty tiger food...but alas, no tiger. As it turns out, none of the morning safari vehicles saw one. As we rolled back out of the park gates, we had to decide whether to pony up more money for an afternoon safari and give tiger-spotting another shot. Well, it's not like we had anything else to do that day.
So, back in the jeep for the afternoon. More nice landscape, more deer and monkeys and birds spotted. We had pretty much given up all hope when we came across a line of about 10 jeeps all parked by the side of the road to observe...
...a tiger! Lolling in the bush, taking a nap. It actually twitched its ears a couple of times and even lifted its head up once, but I guess all the tourists weren't interesting enough to come check out, because it just kept going back to sleep. Sadly, this was the best picture we could get.
On our way out of the park, we passed a group of wild peacocks. As I'm sure you have, we've seen peacocks on various fancy lawns around the world, but it was cool to see some in the wild in the part of the world that they actually come from.
I don't think I need to say too much about the ensuing train ride except that there were people sleeping on the luggage racks.
After about 10 hours of travel on that train and two local buses, we finally rolled into our next destination, Khajuraho, home of a celebrated cluster of Hindu temples famous for their erotic carvings.
Kids, cover your eyes: Khajuraho
The carvings did not disappoint.
The temples themselves were built and carved around 1000 A.D., making them quite old and amazingly well-preserved. This is apparently due to their somewhat remote location (still the case from a public-transport perspective!), so the rampaging armies of the last millennium weren't able to find them to destroy them.
Even without all the carvings, the temples would be really impressive just from an architectural standpoint--check this one out from afar. These days, they are set in peaceful, manicured green grounds dotted with trees and azalea bushes, making for a very pleasant visiting experience.
The reserved berths on the very short train were, surprise surprise, already booked out, so once again we found ourselves with General Class tickets. We ended up freeloading in Sleeper, lying in someone else's bunk until they got on the train a few stations later...then sitting four people to a bunk with some other freeloaders til we all got kicked out of that one...then, finally, sleeping on the floor. Luckily, this is a fairly new service and the train was pretty much as clean as could be. Some kind fellow travelers covered us with a warm blanket, and woke us up when the train pulled into Agra at the appetizing hour of 2AM. Another great night's sleep accomplished! Um, not.
Taj Mahal: Not a bad tomb
It took us longer to get into downtown Agra and find a decent hotel room than we'd hoped--I'll spare you the details. I'll just say that I was really happy when we finally crawled into a real bed around 5AM. Time to sleep! Except that the light on the Taj Mahal is supposed to be the best at sunrise, so we were up again by 6:30. Arrrrrgh.
Right, so, the only reason you would ever want to go to Agra is to see the Taj Mahal. It really is a beautiful monument and is worth the expensive ticket price and all the hassle and dirt of Agra. However, at least in wintertime, I'd say that the light on it isn't really that good until around 9AM, thanks to all the fog/smog. Yup, you heard it here first: if you're visiting in winter, no need to kill yourself to wake up at the crack of dawn (unless, of course, you want to beat the crowds, but we still found it fairly crowded as early as 7).
Blah blah blah. Here it is, the Taj Mahal!
How come no matter how little sleep you get, you never look tired?
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