Golu
Amit
Amit and Golu. We were like three brothers.
I met Golu and Amit in Khajuraho. They live there. They wanted to travel with me. I met their parents, who allowed them to come with me for three days. We went together to Chitrakoot, 'mini Varanasi'. It's a pilgrim place for Hindu people. Inhabitants : 15 000. Pilgrimers : 15 000. Monkeys : 30 000. Lord Ram, the incarnation of Vishnu whose life has been written in the Ramayana, which could be compared to the evangile, with more miracles, demons, monsters and human drama, is supposed to have spent 12 years in exile in the area. Many places are related to a particular episode of the Ramayana, and often you can even see, colored in orange on the stones, the exact place where the feet of Lord Ram were while he was sending an arrow on a monster ! All the more impressing that the Ramayana is supposed to have been written between 1000 and 500 BC...
Early morning at the ghat
Hindu people come there to worship the gods. Very few people speak english in Chitrakoot, so there are no foreign tourists. That means, I wasn't asked all the time to buy something. Golu and Amit spoke to the people, and I was generally standing apart. Thanks to their patience (well, mostly Amit's patience. Golu is very young - only 13), they helped me to sgnifically improve my hindi. We visited many of the temples in the area. In some of them, Brahmans wait for the people and if they think they are rich, they ask them for money. Many of them asked me or demanded quite a lot of money. They put the pressure on me, using their supposed religious powers to get money from visitors...
Most of the worships are made 'for good luck', and one can find in the boats white rabbits, also 'for good luck'. There are also many saddhus. Saddhus are supposed to dedicate their life to God and abandon all their belongings. They live of gifts given by people, who respect them. Some of them look serious, but a lot of them are cheaters that benefit from the situation to live without working. We even met a 12 years old boy begging for money. He told us that he had to do this because his father wants him to get money at home. But he confessed afterwards that he didn't want to go to school at all, and that he prefered this life.
Early morning at the ghat
Hindu people come there to worship the gods. Very few people speak english in Chitrakoot, so there are no foreign tourists. That means, I wasn't asked all the time to buy something. Golu and Amit spoke to the people, and I was generally standing apart. Thanks to their patience (well, mostly Amit's patience. Golu is very young - only 13), they helped me to sgnifically improve my hindi. We visited many of the temples in the area. In some of them, Brahmans wait for the people and if they think they are rich, they ask them for money. Many of them asked me or demanded quite a lot of money. They put the pressure on me, using their supposed religious powers to get money from visitors...
Most of the worships are made 'for good luck', and one can find in the boats white rabbits, also 'for good luck'. There are also many saddhus. Saddhus are supposed to dedicate their life to God and abandon all their belongings. They live of gifts given by people, who respect them. Some of them look serious, but a lot of them are cheaters that benefit from the situation to live without working. We even met a 12 years old boy begging for money. He told us that he had to do this because his father wants him to get money at home. But he confessed afterwards that he didn't want to go to school at all, and that he prefered this life.
The batteries of my camera emptied while I was there, and it was impossible to find cells. So many of the places where we went won't be showed here. And no pictures of the thousands of monkeys. They can jump on you if they think you have some seeds in the hand.
Huge statue of the god-ape and friend of Rama, Hanuman
Albino rabbit, 'for good luck'
After the cells emptied, I managed to take a few pictures, without flash, like this one. It's probably difficult to see, but we are in a cave, walking in the water until a small temple dedicated to Shiva.
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