India - Allahabad & Khajuraho

We decided to stop in Allahabad on the way to Khajuraho as the Lonely Planet said it had sites of interest. Well it turns out we were the sites of interest, as we were near enough the only white people in town! 
We spent 4 nights here (3 too many we reckon but couldn’t be helped due to train availability because of Diwali) and in that time we spotted 4 other white people in a town of nearly 1 million people!! It was like being Micky Mouse in Disneyland, everybody wanted a photo with us, we felt like Bollywood stars but it did get tiring after a while. Who’d want to be famous…
We did see where the first PM of India lived, Jawaharlal Nehru, which was also where Ghandi worked with him for independence and there was a very interesting exhibition.
We also saw some fantastic Mughal Mausoleums, one of which contained the remains of the brother of Shah Jahan--the Emperor who built the Taj Mahal.
It turns out this brother was actually the eldest son but his father decided to give the younger son, Shah Jahan, the succession. The Elder brother tried to kill his father in revenge but failed and was blinded for his treachery and imprisoned, if he had succeeded, there wouldn’t be a Taj Mahal.

So after these 4 nights, we were glad to get to Khajuraho and its exquisite temples with erotic carvings, some of these did not leave much to the imagination!
There were so many temples (for such a small town) it took a while to see them all and in fact we hired bikes one day and had fun going around finding other temples and we even bumped into an Elephant.
It was a peaceful place (when we weren’t being hassled by touts) and we met some very nice people. One guy, Suresh, invited us to his family home in a small village around 10km out of Khajuraho. We were treated to a wonderful meal and it was so good to see everyday family life in India. Wend was treated like royalty with the girls of the family dressing her up in a sari and giving her a lovely henna tattoo.

Allahabad

Khajuraho