Sunday, January 13, 2008

Jan 8-12: The story till 12th! (part 1 of 8)

I'm changing my writing style here. Instead of writing a daily story,
I'm giving a bunch update. Why? Sometimes, I believe this makes more
sense. For instance if nothing interesting happened or seen. Many a
time, reading a daily story(and writing it too!) becomes a boring
exercise. So here goes...

Left Khajuraho early in the morning on Jan 8. On the road from
Khajuraho to Bhopal, the one significant place to see is Sanchi. For
this day, my goal was to travel as farther as possible while riding as
less as possible. In case you are wondering how that is possible, the
answer is : taking shortcuts. Shortcuts make for long delays, goes the
saying. And so it happened. The off-beat roads turned out to range
from slightly worse to extremely bad. The hills of Madhya Pradesh had
started too. The hills are gentle and no big climbs anywhere, but
undulating road surfaces do take time. But there was a hidden reward
behind the shortcut: watching the hills at leisure and getting a
better look at rural life. I ended the day at Shahgadh at evening. The
road after this passes through jungles with reduced human activity, so
local advice prevailed. I had to sleep outside the local hotel on a
bench, since the IB was full.

The people in MP have a different way of treating travellers like me.
' chai peeke jaaiye' (come have tea), somebody will call out. 99% of
the time I oblige. Why 99%? I haven't got 100 free teas yet, but I
haven't left any, except yesterday! I've received considerable help in
terms of arranging for overnight stay.

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