As if elaborate temples of erotic art weren’t drawcard enough, India now offers a new luxury safari experience.
Madhya Pradesh, in the heart of India, boasts among its drawcards the World Heritage-listed Khajuraho Temples, one of the country’s most-visited destinations. Another of the state’s attractions is safari, which recently acquired a high-end portfolio when India’s haute hospitality group Taj Hotels joined forces with swish African safari specialists &Beyond to create Taj Safaris. With the opening of the joint venture’s Pashan Garh in Panna National Park, visitors can combine some of India’s finest temple artistry with a safari experience.
The Khajuraho Temples are beautiful crescendos of golden sandstone built in the ninth and 10th centuries. Each is an architectural symphony of elaborately figured walls crowned by stacked, mountain-like spires, finials and vases. The 12 lavishly ornamented temples of the western group are the finest, with Kandariya Mahadeva being the most spectacular, featuring more than 800 sculptures carved on the exterior and interior walls.
The figures depict deities, mythical beasts, battle scenes and, most famously, couples performing athletic erotic acts – the latter earning the complex the reputation of “the Kama Sutra in stone”. The delicately rendered Hindu ideal of beauty – round faces, long “fish-shaped” eyes, large rounded breasts and hips – creates a powerful, languid sensuality, but it is the minute detail of garments and ornaments, the elegant profiles and dignified expressions, the grace and dynamism of the figures that is so captivating.
Visit the complex in the early morning, when the temples glow golden, the gardens are cool and the restoration workers and tour groups are yet to arrive. Afterwards, enjoy the view back across the lawns to the temples from the rooftop cafe of Hotel Siddharth, or explore Khajuraho’s retail opportunities, which range from pavement sellers offering bright glass bangles to Chandela Emporium’s sapphire and emerald necklaces, star ruby rings and array of bronze and carved wooden figures.
Those with limited time will want a base close by. The 94-room Hotel Chandela Khajuraho provides a respite from the heat and dust. A cooling cucumber and mint juice to accompany delicious fish tikka, eaten poolside at lunchtime, revives in no time. You might even feel up to tennis or badminton, or something less strenuous: a massage at the hotel’s Chetana Health Club.
For those wanting their culture combined with nature and not a little luxury, there is Pashan Garh (meaning “stone house”), the new Taj Safaris lodge, a one-hour drive from Khajuraho. One of a string of four safari properties developed by the team over the past two years in Madhya Pradesh, this lodge opened mid-December 2008 with seven cottages, and another five will be ready this month for the season.
The stone cottages are contemporary, but incorporate vernacular architectural features and materials. Rooms are large, with luxurious expanses of bathroom, banquette and bed, feature walls of glass looking onto the bush, and a terrace with private machaan (gazebo) for lolling and lunching. Appointments are bespoke and thoughtful, down to the leather jungle-gym box containing weights, skipping ropes and yoga mat.
A few of the local decorative items such as lanterns and macrame chandeliers can be taken away from the shop, which also stocks bandhani silk stoles and pashminas in forest colours, plus white linen shirts and cotton kurtas. If it’s clarity of mind you want to take away, there’s the traditional champi (head massage), along with other deep-tissue and relaxation treatments.
The chefs at Pashan Garh are proud of their impressive organic kitchen garden, which uses recycled-water and produces all their salad greens and most vegetables. Their beautifully spiced, lighter style of Indian lunch zings with deliciously fresh offerings such as spinach broth, kebabs and creative salads. You can also indulge in tandoor-roasted potatoes and, to follow, crème brûlée or brie with homemade biscuits, dried figs and local honey, all guaranteed to send you off for a nap on the day bed.
Divine location dining is also a specialty here, from breakfasts at scenic viewing spots on safari to poolside dining, or an evening of fantastic Indian tapas served to guests seated in palanquins in a magical clearing in the bush, glowing with lanterns and fires – the total maharaja and maharani experience.
Speaking of things royal, there are tours to nearby forts and to the old Hindu Islamic memorials to the royal dead, built overlooking the lake in Panna. The National Park was the hunting ground of the Maharaja of Panna, so when out on safari, you’ll come across the occasional temple, monument or hunting watchtower.
Taj Safaris itself owns 77ha of private bush, and is surrounded by the 454sq km park, which is blessed with a variety of topography (the Ken River Valley, plateaux and mountains) and therefore vegetation and inhabitants. You might drive through a teak forest where the leaves are eaten to filigree by a moth called the skeletoniser; later you’re in an acacia forest, then open grassland, enjoying great views along the way – not a guaranteed thing on safari, where the bush might be thick.
The Panna National Park has in recent years seen little Bengal tiger action, but two females arrived in March this year to join the resident leopards, and though both are elusive, there is plenty else to spot. The Pashan Garh guides are exceptionally well trained; among them one of only two female naturalists in the country, Ratna Singh, whose knowledge of the Indian bush is impressive, generosity in sharing it unfailing, and manner engaging.
Pre-dawn, the park is quiet and has a chill in the air, the early-morning smell of dew on dust, the dark giving way as a deep-orange disk slips over the horizon. Then the birds begin – a crew of noisy babblers (also known as Seven Sisters, because they never keep quiet), a vignette of attractive painted sand grouse, and a rustle of quails. Striking dashes of colour break into the pale light: the blue of a kingfisher or Indian roller, some plum-headed parakeets eating red silk cotton tree flowers.
A family of wild boar runs then freezes. A large band of langur (monkeys) silhouetted in the bare branches of a tree forms a Dr Seuss scene. Later, in the heat, as with any extended family, the older members of the troupe sit in the shade while the babies bounce, bob and wrestle. In the afternoon light, the monkeys have a fuzzy, backlit aura.
There are lots of deer doing Ben Stiller’s “Blue Steel” look: chital (spotted deer); sambar (large brown deer with Mickey Mouse ears, the wing nuts of the forest); nilgai (blue bull antelope), who give birth to twins more than 60 per cent of the time and all defecate in the same places, forming middens; and chintara, Indian gazelles that trot and bounce like Pepé le Pew (even the naturalist description – “pronking” – isn’t much more serious).
Breakfast might be at the park watchtower with views of the Ken Valley, the river and the mountains opposite, or atop a plateau overlooking a deep gorge, where craggy long-billed vultures nest on the rock ledges and float on the thermals. The picnic is no modest affair, generally involving homemade granola, full of toasted almonds and cashews, served with pots of freshly made yoghurt, pomegranate seeds, pistachios and pomegranate coulis; fresh muffins; and spiced Indian rollups, coffee and masala chai.
Another park excursion that’s peaceful in the morning or afternoon is a boat trip up the Ken River to see gharial crocodiles basking in the sun and peacocks displaying for their hens on the banks. The picturesque riverbank and royal temples appear like a 19th-century painting.
In the cool of the afternoon, you might like to take an escorted bird-spotting walk in the bush surrounding the lodge, quite possibly meeting your butler on the way back, smiling behind a traditional cart laden with aperitifs and canapés, with lanterns strung in the trees. Romance and beauty are around every corner here.
Stay
Pashan Garh
Panna National Park.
The lodge is open October 1 to July 1. Game viewing is best October to March, as April to June is very hot. Many combine a visit to Pashan Garh with nights at one or two of the group’s other camps in the wildlife circuit, for a different safari experience. Mahua Kothi is the next closest camp, a four-hour-drive away.
Hotel Chandela Khajuraho
District Chhatarpur Maduha, Khajuraho.
Dance Festival
Another of Khajuraho’s stellar attractions is its annual Dance Festival (pictured on our cover), a week-long classical-dance festival set among the temples. The 2010 festival runs from February 25 to March 3.
Source: Qantas The Australian Way October 2009