Foremans' Travel: Day 11 - Two 16th Century Palaces

The food at each stop has been great.

Day 11 March 3 - Sunday. Today's extra long day we drive 4 hours to Orcha, visit two palaces, and catch the train to Agra.

By the way, while we can rarely pronounce the food names, so far it's been delicious… always fresh cooked vegetables, scrumptious desserts, nan breads fresh off the walls of the ovens, sometimes buttered with garlic. We leave the hotel early and head for Orcha.

We pass through Chatarpur, a college and market town of about 100,000. We see the remains of two nasty wrecks that make us grateful for our excellent drivers. In one, the car still sat under the rear of a truck now a week after the crash in which a bride and groom had been killed. Sobering.

In Orcha we stopped at a hotel for lunch and to meet our local guide for the two palaces.

The first palace was the residence of the 16th century Hindu king of Hindustan (old name for India) so it is called Raja Mahal (King Palace).

This same Raja took 30 years to build the second palace, Jahnghir Mahal, as a 'guest house' for Jahnghir, the father of the Shah who built the Taj Mahal (Crown Palace, tomorrow's feature). Jahnghir came with his thousands of groupies and stayed just one night! He had to rush off to Lahore in what is now Pakistan to settle some rebellion. He died there so never came back to this palace. Hindu tradition says once a gift is given, you don't take it back, so the palace was never occupied again!

The king used architectural themes from Hindu and Muslim traditions: blue and turquoise; elephants and geometric shapes; door and window arches; etc., to show the compatibility of the two cultures.

After the palace tours, we went back to the hotel, freshened up, picked up box dinners for the train segment to come. New toll system: Our bus stopped as we crossed the line from one state to another. The driver crossed the road to pay a toll to some guys sitting in a car by the side of the road. Fare based on number of seats not the bus, not number of people or axles. Another hmmm.

At the train station the red caps carried our luggage on their heads using red scarfs which they draped around their necks between trips. Bags of peppers drew flies to buzz and dogs to nap. Piles of brown on the tracks added aroma. We waited on the platform about 30 minutes, boarded quickly in a crunch, porters putting our bags above (one bag fell off hitting Janet on the shoulder) and off we went. We ended up getting a box meal that came with the ticket as well as what IE brought from the hotel. All pretty horrible but we were assured that what we didn't eat would not go to waste.

A band of Sikhs in our car broke into drumming and singing prayers for most of the trip. In Agra the IE team met us and whisked us off the Platinum LEEDS rated ITC Mughul Sheraton Hotel.

What a treat to come upon a Hindu wedding procession, the groom atop a white horse (that you can hardly see in the photo due to the decoration), trumpets, drums, blaring music, and DJ from speaker truck, electric chandeliers and lots of dancing. The groom rides in the way to the brides house where they party all night.

We arrived after dark and will leave before sunrise, but we saw enough to know sit is a spectacular place… maybe better than anything we saw in Vegas or at Disney.