I made a cow! - City Slickers (1991)

Elaine is currently asleep, something I doubt I'll achieve tonight! So when better to fill you in on our last 24 hours than now?

Khajuraho

Yesterday we went to see the Kama Sutra Temples, man were we hot under the collar ten minutes in! Due to the 40 degree heat and not the sculptures. The temples I must say were amazing, when you see pictures you think nice ancient temple covered in sexy statues....NEXT! But when you go up close or inside and see that they are covered in relief sculptures from the base to the top, how each piece is almost identical and the sheer scale you think that's feckin' impressive.

Now I wouldn't like to disappoint anyone by not passing comment on the actual content of the sculptures; which need to be looked at in terms of symbolic reference and cultural meaning but there wasn't a single thing, as Elaine put it, that could be done without a close group of friends and a horse/lion (or half horse half lion which I shall call Horion). Also I got to see some monkeys! (real, not erotic monkey statues).

So back to the present; trust us to decide to travel into Uttar Pradesh on the day the Indian High court decided to release their verdict on a dispute which has run over the last hundred years between the Hindu & Muslim people of Ayodhya (birthplace of Lord Rama). As such all the buses have decided not to run which has resulted in us shelling out a fortune to get a car to drive us to meet our train in Satna, which we arrived 4 hours early for (but I got to see a cheeky monkey on the road through the Panna Nature Reserve so I don't mind too much).

Elaine the tour guide

A four hour wait in a remote Indian railway station will draw attention if you like it or not, but what will draw more attention is writing in your travel journal in front of the locals (some of who will blatantly come to look over your shoulder) but the greatest way to draw attention is to have a random cow stroll down the platform, stand beside where you are sitting and begin licking your leg, oh yes and seeing as cows are sacred here and me not wanting to cause an international incident I slowly stood & walked away only for the cow to follow me! I eventually lost the cow but not my audience who remained and laughed until their train was moving, probably going to be a Bollywood film of "One white man & his cow; a love story".

Also we made the acquaintance of Ju, a nice Korean guy travelling to Delhi to head home, who was nice enough to let us join him in the busy train station cafe. Thanks Ju and if your name is spelt incorrectly let me know.

Basically we've spent the day travelling from Khajuraho to Satna to catch our overnight train to Varanasi. Elaine seemed to be impressed at our 2AC class bunks, I personally think there were higher hygiene standards on the trains to Auschwitz. Elaine may have felt I was being a snob understandably but she did tend to agree with me when a cockroach joined us for dinner. Other than that, there is a novelty factor about being on a carriage full of curtained bunks and being given packaged sheets & pillows. So as Elaine sleeps I type, sorry if it's a bit long winded but this is a long trip but I've just noticed that cockroaches also like to look over your shoulder as you write so with that I am going to say goodnight, lay down the netbook and go shake myself off.

On the night train

Patrick (30/9/10)