Nrising Dev Palace
17 Feb. Orchha-Datia 60 km.
After 2 days of rain, it was nice to wake up with the sun shining through the windows. It's still cool here at. 7:00 in the morning. I do yoga again for open door. Sitting the next few hours and process the photos for the next report.
First 10:30 am I'm ready to drive towards the city Datia which have one of India's most beautiful palaces built years the 1620th. On Fortview's owner, I understand that there is only one hotel in Datia and it is slightly outside the city itself.
Since it has rained a lot the last few days, I have decided to only run of the main road. It took me a little over 2 hours. the journey distance is only 60 km to Datia. I had a short thai break.
1/3 of the road was being built up. So I drove long distances, alternately in loose gravel on bumpy dirt roads. Some places was as clean slides. So it was important to keep the focus on the front wheel swings, if you wanted to avoid ending up sliding on his stomach through the mud.
Tourist Motel. I allow myself the luxury of staying at a kind of Fort Knox
13:00 am I arrive at the Tourist Motel. It is situated on a large open cut area with a clear view of the Old Palace, Nrising Dev. It is located on a small hilltop on the other side of a large lake. This time I have no prospect of a fortress, but a Palace from my windows. The room has no balcony or terrace, but some large windows. The architect should have added a small terrace, so you could go out in the sun under a parasol.
The room cost 35$ each night. I negotiated me down to 30$ when I was going to be here for 3 nights. For me it was pure luxury, as I previously lived for less than half. On my last MC.India Rajasthan journey 2011 I lived on average for 14$ each night.
It is great to be able to afford luxury once in a while. A privilege without equal. I must of course acknowledge that I am just an old double standard luxury hippie who in everyday life has become accustomed to a somewhat higher standard of living than I have lived during the last 5 weeks.
It feels like a cleansing process, to stand under a shower that works and get a decent hot bath, what has been something of a rarity on this trip. It's like returning to civilization after 5 weeks of primitive campout, where the great hygiene was not a priority.
I take a little step out of the role of MC. Travellers with mud on shoes and pants - look a little more civilized aesthetic out. So I find my small scissors and trim my beard. Cuts the long hair in the nose and take the tweezers out from my first aid package to remove many hairs in his ears. The wild look is now under some control.
I turn up the music. - Feel nice relaxed. The music reverberates to my body, which begins to move to the tones I know or is it my soul, which is set in motion like a pendulum in time.
The room cost 35$ each night. I negotiated me down to 30$ when I was going to be here for 3 nights. For me it was pure luxury, as I previously lived for less than half. On my last MC.India Rajasthan journey 2011 I lived on average for 14$ each night.
It is great to be able to afford luxury once in a while. A privilege without equal. I must of course acknowledge that I am just an old double standard luxury hippie who in everyday life has become accustomed to a somewhat higher standard of living than I have lived during the last 5 weeks.
It feels like a cleansing process, to stand under a shower that works and get a decent hot bath, what has been something of a rarity on this trip. It's like returning to civilization after 5 weeks of primitive campout, where the great hygiene was not a priority.
I take a little step out of the role of MC. Travellers with mud on shoes and pants - look a little more civilized aesthetic out. So I find my small scissors and trim my beard. Cuts the long hair in the nose and take the tweezers out from my first aid package to remove many hairs in his ears. The wild look is now under some control.
I turn up the music. - Feel nice relaxed. The music reverberates to my body, which begins to move to the tones I know or is it my soul, which is set in motion like a pendulum in time.
Sunrise
This pure white Tourist Motel, is quite beautiful and seems peaceful with its simple lines, as it is there, in the open rocky landscape.
High white walls with broken glass on top surrounds this motel's large rocky area, to prevent intruders from entering the area. It can resemble a kind of Fort Knox or Datia's Great Wall. As a guest, you are completely secluded and do not have to be confronted with the wretched poor conditions, most inhabitants in Datia live.
Besides the beautiful palace, the city Datia, located behind the palace is not so much more to offer, in addition to some dilapidated small temples in different parts of the city. Some of these have slowly been ia part of ugly unaesthetic newer self-construction. So Datia is not a charming little town. The same was also true for the city I just left Orchha.
It is not a tourist town, where you can spend several days seeing the sights. It's probably the reason I actually is the only overnight guest at the motel.
In the daytime, there are some great guests coming in big cars with drivers to enjoy the good food and the beautiful view of the motel Restaurant. A couple of times, arrived there some major tour buses there enjoy the view. That is probably why they call this Hotel for a Motel as most running again fairly quickly.
So every night I was the only guest in the restaurant who got their well-prepared good Indian food at a reasonable price. The staff kept a nice distance and let me be in peace and quiet.
It is the most peaceful place I've stayed in this MC. journey where none of my senses were up in the red zone, maybe just the visual delight every morning when I saw the sun breaking through the mist and slowly give life to a new day.
For not to completely forget the outside world behind these white walls, I could every half hour hear the sound of the horn when a train passed by on the other side of the highway that ran behind the motel.
From the depths of a Shesterfield armchair, an Indian handmade copy, I enjoy the view, the fresh breeze and calm to immerse myself in my further visual dialogue. A kind of retreat for body and soul.
Internet, I could use at the Motel manager's office. When he was not himself on the net.
The children are very keen for me to photograph them, so sometimes I take a few pictures, but many times it is not enough attention on my part. In this small isolated town close to my Motel, where I take some pictures, these teenage boys a little too loud and proclaiming, without that I understood what they shouted I felt despised 'giraffe', so I had to directly turn to the one teenage boy (the one who has taken his pants down) and angrily say 'Shut up'. It got them immediately to alleviate some of their heckling. - This time, I have moved too far into their territory, where they feel that they are the ones who have taken over.
Fruit bowl of leaves stitched together with small sticks
Milk central
Sugar
India's poverty
On my three MC. journey's, I have chosen to live in cities, which has an old town center of houses that not have changed much since they were built 150 to 250 years ago. They have not been able to afford to restore the buildings or get running water and toilet.
Many of these old historic buildings exude the spirit and dignity, one senses how that was once lavished on aesthetics. They are built in a time when they thought the detail and comprehensiveness and created individual personal houses. Most of the houses are probably passed down for generations, therefore, feel the residents a natural pride and obligation to keep the house in fairly good condition, although they hardly have a living.
Poverty is experienced not as strong as you are greeted by beautiful dilapidated buildings by their simple aesthetic form, symbolic detail and luminous life-affirming strong colors, exudes the spirit and soul. Just as the body is the soul dwelling house body. In a healthy beautiful body should be a healthy beautiful soul. The residents of these houses are culture preserve and it gives them a kind of integrity, a cultural value that gives them a force in the middle of their material poverty. In these neighborhoods I meet mostly friendly open inquisitive, poor and harmonious inner.
Harmony I find also in the villages where I stopped on my journey, to gather visual impression. Here I experience how through the generations they have passed on their knowledge and skills - and in this way they could survive in difficult economic conditions they live. They exude harmony and balance in life.
Poverty seems strongest in the Indian cities in the poor neighborhoods where the exterior architectural dilapidated, chaotic and unaesthetic framework seems so discordant. Against this background, one senses not only the economic but also the human total poverty. We humans need love, beauty, confidence, challenges and a meaning to life - a corner in life where we feel welcome and feel we belong, there is no room for the capitalist system as the Indian, where the culturally conditioned caste system, together with class society, acts as a straitjacket.
In India, all within sight and sense distance, you can not hide poverty quite yet, as they do in Western countries. The total form of poverty, I have on my travels tried to avoid, not because I did not dare, but it does not uplifting me. It requires a lot of profits, constantly being confront with the back of a society.
I know that I as a tourist on a motorbike. is completely out of balance with the poor environment I move around in. My wealth shines out of the technological objects that surround me. That way they can see that I have everything that they can only dream of having. So the only thing I can do if I want a dialogue, is to meet them with an open mind and show human respect.
18 Feb.
When I found myself in Chitrakut I sent mail to 5 different Servas hosts in Agra if one of them had the time and desire to have me remain as a guest when I got there on my journey. Since I have not gotten any feedback, I try to call one of them on the list, which has no email address.
The first one I call, should, according to my mailing list be a 75 year old Physics Professor. I ask if he has time and energy to have me as guest 20 & 21 Feb. He said yes immediately, I was very welcome. I quickly realized that it is not ther physics professor I talk to, but Dr. Ashok. The Physics professor is his uncle. I ask him therefore to SMS his address in Agra. - It was extremely positive.
I'm trying now to directly call Sevas hosts in Delhi, maybe I have more luck with a phone call than I have had with email. After several phone calls I finally got through to a yoga / meditation teacher of 78 years, according to the mailing list. He was immediately positive, I just had to show up when I came to Delhi. It was absolutely incredible. Here I sent one email after another. I think Indians are not much to write mail, they can better cope with a little more personal contact you have when you are talking on the phone.
19 Feb.
Tourist Motel manager recommend me to visit the largest active Hindu temple in Datia, one he visits regularly. To enter the temple, I besides my shoes also have to take of my leather belt. My camera accidentally slipping out when I moved the belt which is was fastened to, and falls down on the tiled floor.
I investigate immediately the camera. It can not open again. Lens edge has again suffered a blow, so the lenses can not slide in and out. - After numerous attempts I'll give up immediately and go in to see the temple.
In this MC.journey I have only visited a few of the newer Hindu temples like this, since I'm not so crazy about their aesthetics.
Back at the motel I make a new attempt to save the camera.
To get the mechanical part back to work, I use my sharp fruit knife to cut / grind a little of the lens edge that is made of aluminum. I am forced to create a little more space, so the three lens barrel again can slide back and forth on camera-computer command. However, not every time they succeeded, but it can take pictures. - The camera was again saved.
This time it was not that big a disaster if it had not come to work, because now I come to the end of this MC.Journey. Tomorrow I am on the way to Agra and then return to New Delhi.
I investigate immediately the camera. It can not open again. Lens edge has again suffered a blow, so the lenses can not slide in and out. - After numerous attempts I'll give up immediately and go in to see the temple.
In this MC.journey I have only visited a few of the newer Hindu temples like this, since I'm not so crazy about their aesthetics.
Back at the motel I make a new attempt to save the camera.
To get the mechanical part back to work, I use my sharp fruit knife to cut / grind a little of the lens edge that is made of aluminum. I am forced to create a little more space, so the three lens barrel again can slide back and forth on camera-computer command. However, not every time they succeeded, but it can take pictures. - The camera was again saved.
This time it was not that big a disaster if it had not come to work, because now I come to the end of this MC.Journey. Tomorrow I am on the way to Agra and then return to New Delhi.
Nrising Dev Palace
From the middle of the palace facing East
South
West
North
From the middle of the palace facing East
South
West
North
Nrising Dev Palace
AUM
Bjarne
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