Breakfast wasn't a buffet today so we had an Americasn breakfast- juice porridge, scrambled egg (me), poached (Alice), toast and banana, along with ginger tea that the waiter recommended for our colds.

Outside the Jain temple, there was some very persistent souvenir sellers and ALice found the keyrings funny- you pressed a lever to make the man push his willy in the woman (Khajaraho is famous for its kama sutra temples). I thought it was funny that when I kept saying 'No thank you', the man thought it was because I was too young and didn't like it, but then said 'but looks, it's good for the health'.

A friend of Mahesh's from Delhi took us round the old village of Khajuraho where the caste system is still used- i.e. there are 4 castes, the lowest being 'the untouchables', where they can only marry into the same caste, and each has their own shops and hospitals. He said that the women get up at 5am every morning to spread cow pats outside their houses to prevenmt mosquitos coming in- the dung contains ammonia- I'm glad I'm not indian! We went to the village school which has either volunteer teachers or teachers funded by the village. They don't have tables or chairs, instead sitting in lines on carpets, spending their money on books and teaching materials. We got taken to the two handicraft shops.

It was a shame that we were both suffering with our colds as the western temples of Khajaraho was probably my favourite place so far, but our energy levels were flagging and we kept having to sit down.

We didn't realise this until today, but Mahesh is driving back to Delhi tomorrow, and so we had to say goodbye topday!I hope we manage OK without him!

We walked back into the centre to have a brownie/chocolate cake and coffee/green tea, while writing our christmas cards.

When we left to che3ck out the yoga classes at hotel lakeside, the boys we got chatting to earlier on the walk from our hotel into town asked us if we wanted to see the ceremony at the temple- it had a raised circular platform that represented the female and a p[illar in the centre that represented the male (it did look a bit phallic). One of them said that the pillar was ever so slowly rising up! We walked around the platform then went up the stairs to the platform, round the pillar and recieved a splodge of red on our foreheads and some rice from a monk. Then we went to somebody or other's tomb. On our way to hotel lakeside the boys told us about their friend whose a yoga teacher who doesn't charge a set rate but accepts any donation. They had chai with us while we ate our paneer Kadai ( a bit like Jalfrezi) and veg koftes and indian bread. They seemed nice and genuine but I didn't want to let my guard down completely.