Artistic Khajuraho Temple in State of Madhya Pradesh in India

The foreigners visiting India love to visit the ancient and historical places of tourist's interest in India. One such famous and popular visiting place in India is Khajuraho, situated in the State of Madhya Pradesh. These famous temples of Khajuraho were built by Chandel Rajputs in the year 925 as they were highly impressed with the natural beauty of this area. I had an opportunity recently to visit these famous temples during my recent visit to India. I would briefly narrate my experience of visiting it in this article.

You can reach Khajuraho by bus or hired car from Jhansi, which is around 50 miles away from Khajuraho. Alternatively, you can travel by train and get down at Hardyalpur station of Central railway. Khajuraho is around 60 miles away from this station. There are regular daily flights for Khajuraho from Delhi. We reached there by hired car from Jhansi, which is the best option. There were two golden trees of dates placed here at the entrance of the city by the Rajput kings. Hence, the name was given as Khajuraho to this city of temples. There were 85 temples built originally. Around 23 temples are only left now. The most beautiful sculptures of stone showing the eighty four various positions of performing sex as described by Maharshi Vatsayanan in Kokshastra are the highlights of these temples. Many visitors take the detailed photographs and the video film of these sculptures during their visit here. Khajuraho is situated at the height of 1500 feet from the mean sea level. There are mainly three sections of the temples here. The West side of temples cover Laxman temple, Lord Shiva temple, Chitragupta temple, Parvati temple, Nandi temple, and Mataji temple. The South side of the temple covers Kaladevi and Chaturbhuj temple. The third and last section of East side covers Parshvanath temple, Shantinath temple, Adinath temple, and Lord Brahma temple.

The most popular temples that must be visited are described here below. The temple of sixty four Jogini is the oldest temple here, which was built in the year 900. This temple is 105 feet long and 60 feet wide. There are total 65 rooms in this temple, built from the most beautiful black stones. The 64 versions of Kalka Mata are installed here in 64 balconies. The temple of Kandaria mahadev is the next. This temple is built from red sand stones and is 52 meters long and 30 meters wide and its height is 30 meters. There are 872 statues of all sorts of gods and goddesses placed here in this temple. The Chitragupt temple is the next temple to be visited. There is a most beautiful statue of Lord sun, installed in a chariot having seven horses pulling it. The statue of the sun is 6 feet tall. The statue of Lord Vishnu with 11 heads is also installed here. The Vishvanath temple is having the statue of Lord Brahma that has three heads. The statues of lions and elephants are put in the North and south side of the main statue. The museum at Khajuraho has all the historical specimens, and ancient broken statues of Ninth century. This museum remains open from 10 am to 5 pm everyday and should not be missed.

There are many luxurious hotels here for the tourists. We had stayed at Hotel Ashoka, which is the best hotel here. It has 38 luxurious rooms in all. The hotel provides 4 star facilities with their own restaurants. The hotel tariff is Rs.5000 ($125) per day for a nice double room. The other hotels like Gupta Hotel, The Joy Oberoi, Hotel Zankar, Hotel Chandela, Holiday-Inn, and Hotel Payal also provide good facilities. It is essential to book your hotel accommodation in advance as there can be heavy rush here during October to December. You may need to stay for couple of days here to enjoy all the vital sites seeing places.

I would strongly recommend all my AC friends to visit these temples to get the glimpses of the most beautiful sculptures of Hindu Mythology at Khajuraho.