Escape to the country

Stu - 27th December - After breakfast we headed to Agra station to catch the train to Jhansi and then take a 30 min tuk-tuk ride out into the countryside to the small town of Orchha. Before boarding the train entertainment was provided by one of the local monkeys who stole bananas from one of our group, Sarah (well, the monkey ran up to her and she shrieked and threw the bananas at the monkey). Who knew monkeys like bananas?

Orchha was pleasantly different to all of the stops so far, a small town of about 10,000 it was a calm change to the hustle and bustle of Delhi, Jaipur and Agra. 

Orchha is a holy town said the be the home of Rama, the seventh incarnation of Vishnu. As such it is a totally vegetarian town, no problem though ad that meant even more delicious varieties of veggie curry.

After freshening up after the train ride and a little bit of exploring the town at 7pm we headed to town's main temple to observe the evening prayer.

Dinner was on another roof terrace followed by Indian whisky and rum (which stands for Regularly Used Medicine apparently) and trading folk songs from the groups various nationalities. We had England, Australia, India and Russia represented in our Euro-Australasian-Asian Song Contest. When this moved to trying to say tongue twisters in each other's native language we realised if was probably time to head back to the hotel.