25 June - India - Orchha

We pulled into our station round 7.30am & rather pale bedraggled bunch of travellers traipsed out to the waiting tuk tuks. After a white knuckle 45 min drive we arrive at the hotel. It's called Bundelkhand riverside hotel. It's a heritage property as its an old Mharahaj
Palace & it's beautiful. Full of character & charm. We have riverside rooms, there are extensive gardens & spacious rooms with lovely showers. What paradise !!!!!
Bhagi decides to amend the programme & just include one activity, a visit to a NGO paper making factory set up to use recycled fabric scraps & enable local woman to help earn money for their families.

6 of us manage to go along & it's a fascinating process - mainly because the methods & machinery are so old school & the philosophy of the project is to keep everything as manual as possible to provide more jobs. This is a recurring theme we hear, no hot water on train so that someone can one along & sell tea or water & earn a few rupees. ( no one came to sell us anything!!!). People just drop rubbish everywhere so that more street cleaners are needed to clean up. A flawed argument I feel as I don't see totally clean & rubbish free streets or fields.

We enjoy a quiet walk to the river & by dinner time R is feeling better & I've got 'Delhi belly'.
Great:(