Khajuraho was a lovely place to visit. Great accommodation at Hotel Harmony in a clean little town that felt like it had been purposely built for tourism. No rubbish on the roads and well maintained temples.
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| A CLEAN Town? |
The town is built around the Karma Sutra Temples. We visited the Western Temples, which were amazing, just viewing all the carvings. Enough said just check out the photographs.
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| The Western Temples Entry Point |
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| World Heritage Temple |
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| No Comment |
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| You get the drift |
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| Amazing Temples and 14 in total |
This did leave us some time to check out the rest of the town and have a night on the ale. A lot of places do seem to close early in India with a curfew of 11am, but this was enough time for us to polish off 14 large bottles of Kingfisher with dinner. It was great to let our hair down, not realising the effect that glycerine can have in the brewing process. Probably not the best night to pick for a jolly knees up!!!
Beer Brewed with the addition of Glycerin...
Maybe after me going on about Indian beer for months, there is a slight possibility that they are not fully up to scratch in terms of taste quality? This could have something to do with the addition of Glycerin. This addition leaves oily foam on top of the beer once it is poured along with a bitter aftertaste. Yes, Glycerin exists in the alcoholic state as Glycerol. Glycerin is added to beer as a preservative. The Indian climate is close to being ideal for beer storage. But I have come to find out that other major sources of information like Wikipedia denies this fact. They also say that pure glycerin is sweet in taste which I am not sure about to be honest. I have not tried it. One thing is for certain. It doesn’t agree with everybody and it can leave you feeling quite ill with sickness and headaches no matter how many bottles have been consumed, as Kate found out. You have been warned!!!
Step By Step: Removal of Glycerin from Beer
Get a Glass/tumbler of water.
Open the bottle of beer slowly so as to create less turbulence.
Cover the mouth of the beer with your thumb and slowly turn it upside down with mouth inside the water. This is the trickiest part, ensure you do not shake the bottle and cause the dissolved Carbon Dioxide to effervesce. The reason will be clear below.
As soon as the bottle is upside down you will see thick yellow colored liquid coming out. Which is the organic compound mixed with the coloring agents in the beer?
Keep it there for some time. Maybe a min or two. I kept it for over 5 minutes. Hoping to drain out the stuff completely losing some beer in the process.
Put it back and enjoy the amazing taste of what is actually Beer. Yes my friend that is what beer tastes like. If it doesn’t taste close to Budweiser beer, you might have done something seriously wrong. I even feel that Carlsberg is de-glycerinified Kalyani beer which we’ll get to later, who knows! I don’t care as long my brew tastes awesome.
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| How to Remove that nasty Glyserin!!! |
We awoke the next morning with pretty bad hangovers just in time for our morning yoga class. We forgot about that one! What a silly idea. Kate with more sense passed on that experience to recover in bed. Yoga with our Guru turned out to be pretty enlightening where he introduced us to body positions I never knew existed as well as laughing Yoga and lots of humming. Danny, Kathryn and I thought he was taking the piss at times but right back at him. I put a smile on his face even with a roaring hangover. He asked us to show him a dance from our homeland. Of course I obliged and pulled out the caterpillar also known as the worm, He was pretty impressed I think. I needed to sit down now!!!
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| Omming with our Yoga Guru and a thick head! |
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| What are we playing at Danny? |
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| The Guru is loving it trust me... |
Once recovered, there was no time to waste. We were planning to visit the Panna Tiger Reserve, with my love for Tigers but were disappointed to learn that there hadn’t been any sightings for two years. It is even thought that there are limited if in fact no Tigers remaining in the whole of India. What a tragedy!!!
We opted instead to hire a rickshaw to take us to Raneh Falls. A journey through rural India was amazing but nothing prepared us for the Canyon. The waterfall was OK but the Canyon was something else that people don’t even mention. It was so interesting to see pictures and talk to the Park Rangers about the levels the water rises to during Monsoon season.
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| Fantastic Canyon |
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| Enjoying the Canyon |
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| Group Shot |
Obviously by now you realise we are in India where nothing surprises you. Not in a 4X4 but hanging onto the back of the rickshaw we went on what we would like to call the Rickshaw Safari where we managed to see wild monkeys, barking deer and peacocks. The sight of us being passed on jungle paths in a rickshaw by 4X4 vehicles will always stay in my mind. Luckily today we didn’t encounter any Leopards.
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| Rickshaw Safari |
Unfortunately we had to get back onto tarmac, in order to catch our 16 hour 3AC sleeper train to Varanasi. No 2AC available so hopefully we won’t have to sleep on our rucksacks again as when we left Goa for Kerala a month back.
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| Heading back at Sunset for the Train to Varanasi |
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