Khajuraho, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is a group of temples, both Hindu and Jain, about 350 miles south of Delhi. My hosts and I travelled there on the overnight train from Nizamuddin Station in Delhi (a hellhole; I was standing on a filthy platform in the cold, waiting for a train that was six hours late, as it turned from 2014 to 2015) to see these amazing buildings.
These are among the most stunning temples of India, more impressive than the ones at Bishnipur that I wrote about the other day, and rivaling the marble Dilwara Jain Temples at Mt. Abu in intricacy. (I saw those on my last trip to India.) What makes the Khajuraho temples even more amazing is their state of preservation: though they have been deliberately damaged in some places by both Muslims and collectors of artifacts (each small sculpture is worth a fortune), a large portion of the original carving is preserved. That’s amazing given that they date from the 10th and 11th centuries, and are thus a millennium old, and are also made of sandstone.
The buildings themselves are spread out over a wide area, but I’ll show photos of the main group in the town, which is amazingly untouristed given its world-class attraction.
The temples were, amazingly, built without mortar—held together only by skilled fitting and by metal joints. I show an original joint below, photographed at a temple outside of town that is being partly restored.
Some of the temples in town:
How did they build them? The sandstone was quarried nearby, dragged to the site, and then, like the pyramids, the buildings were constructed by starting at the bottom, and then building up earthen ramps as the temples grew taller. After completion, the earth was removed from around the building.
And original metal fastener between the sandstone blocks, pointed out to me by the supervisor of a temple being put back together. This is the only one I saw the whole time:
But it is of course the sculptures that made this place famous, and many are erotic, which are especially titillating to the tourist. I’ll show both types, but first a large-scale view of the decorations:
You can spot some of the erotic sculptures in the photos below:
Some of my favorite sculptures. First, Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of good luck:
Two apsaras, beautiful celestial females. The first one twerks, the second admires herself in a mirror; the third removes a thorn from her foot:
Woman reading what is apparently a distressing letter, which she holds (it’s a scroll) in her right hand:
Vishnu and consorts:
I was told this was unusual in two respects: the god has the head of a felid, and although it is supposed to be a male god, he had breasts to show his female aspect:
Musicians playing for the king:
The king:
Note sure who this is, perhaps Vishnu:
Large sculpture of woman and lion in front of a temple:
Woman tugging on her husband’s beard:
The famous statue of Nandi the bull, Shiva’s mount, in the “Nandi temple”:
Finally, a few of the many famous erotic sculptures. This is one religion that didn’t demonize sex!
Our guide told us that this represented a man playing with a monkey to keep the woman interested and thus prolong their intercourse:
The famous bestiality sculpture: man has congress with a horse while a woman watches in dismay:
Female masturbation: the woman on the left fondles her breasts, the one on the right her genitals:
Dismay over “doggy-style” intercourse:
