Orchha

As a good few of the group were under the weather, and as the weather itself was terrible, Dushyant cancelled our stay in luxury tents and instead booked us into a luxury hotel with a giant swimming pool and what seemed like never ending delicious buffets.

To get to this HELLHOLE ( ) we got a train to Jansi which was most pleasant, and then tuk tuks for about 45 minutes to the hotel. Along the way a humoungous windstorm whipped up and nearly blew the tuk tuk off the road (just as he was overtaking other cars of course). The wind hurled leaves, dust and rubbish into our faces! It was quite scary and pretty funny at the same time. It also seemed like everyone else was going in the opposite direction to us! :D hmmmmmmm

Our next hotel was fierce fancy, except that our room stunk! I think it was to do with the A/C but every time we returned to our rooms, the smell of sewerage was gross! I scared Kat with a tale I read on the internet about how some guy was nearly poisoned in his sleep by the stench in his hotel room. :D

Luckily we both didn't die and I ventured out with the rest of the gang to another cookery class later in the evening.
We went to a lovely lady's house and she showed us how to make Summer Chai, crispy poppadoms (forgotten already), and the most delicious aubergine curry I've ever tasted. All the food was nom.

After this nomfest, a few of us waddled out to investigate the non-stop trance fest tha was going on outside our hotel. We snuck through the grounds of our fancy hotel, only to see a large chessboard of a dancefloor out in the middle of the grass! There were huge speakers set up on the 'board' adn the cheesy music was thumping out, deafening about 20 young Indians who were dancin and prancin and drinkin their heads off. AWESSOMME

They invited us on to the dancefloor and on we went, bustin white-people dance moves wherever we landed. We seemed like realllly krap dancers in comparison to these wild, booty-shakin', hair-flippin, bust-wigglin dancers! And that was just the men! ; )
Anywho we had a great auld boogie and laugh at this awesome Indian Work Party! (WORK PARTY??) and stayed ravin for a good while until we had to retreat to protect our eardrums. : )

The next day we visited another temple/fort/palace with lots of nice paintings of all the various incarnations of Shiva..

IN the afternoon we frolicked in the pool and later Dushyant brought us to a Hindu ceremony where we got to make a wish by twirling an incense stick clockwise three times! if only that worked! Hinduism seems bonkers to me - monkey gods and elephant gods and what not. It's all very interesting, but I can't help but think it's a bit mad. Possibly the maddest out of all the religions? Maybe I'm too close minded. Maybe there was indeed a young boy who's head was chopped off by his dad and replaced with the head of an elephant! Why the hell not!! science schmience..

Later we got a jeep to the train station and hopped on a night train to Varanasi. My 8th and last ever night train in India. Thanks be to Ganesh! This night train however was quite pleasant and enjoyable and we gals had some right auld girly chats on the way to our last stop in India - Varanasi. 8)