The Chandelas rose to power in early tenth century and built 85 temples at Khajuraho, some of them round a lake. In the fifteenth century they were abandoned, many destroyed by the Muslims and of those that remained many of the sculptures were defaced. Trees grew up and soon all the temples were hidden under a thick blanket of vegetation, until the eighteenth century, when an English man, out hunting, discovered the ruins of the remaining temples. The jungle was cleared away and the temples restored painstakingly. Plain sandstone was used to replace carved sandstone, where it was missing and every inch of the outside of the old parts of the temples are now being scrubbed with toothbrushes.
The main temple complex is in a big park, in the small town, which seems to consist mainly of hotels, restaurants and internet places. Between the temples are expanses of carefully watered lawns and big old trees. It is strictly forbidden to walk on the lawns. The rest of the temples are dotted around the countryside amongst villages of mud brick houses with tiled roofs, hump backed hills and rock forms, trees, buffaloes and wild boar that snuffle in the dust. Hoards of children and young men pester the tourists in the countryside but not in the park.
I met a delightful couple from Calcutta. He was a web designer and she an English teacher, well travelled, erudite and cultured, old school Indian middle class, quiet and decent, unlike the modern brash middle classes of today. We talked of Bengali film, poetry and literature and they told me that the golden age of Bengali culture was a little tarnished now.
Every inch of the tall, pointed sandstone temples was originally carved, with sculptures of leaves and vegetation, men and women, warriors, elephants, horses, acrobats, dancers, nymphs and, of course, the famous erotic sculptures. But there are erotic sculptures on temples all over India. I have photographed many of them in Karnataka, where no one took any notice of them at all. It seems that the tourist industry has chosen to focus on Khajuraho, where young Indian men like to sidle up to tourist women and point out the many ‘different positions.’
Khajuraho is very dusty. The roads are narrow and when two vehicles meet, each one has to put two wheels on the dirt track on either side of the paved road, stirring up clouds of dust. In the villages there are only beaten tracks and the fine, soft Indian dust is constantly lifted up by passing traffic taking the tourists to see the outlying temples.
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