The Attack of the Henna Warriors

I've been meaning to post about my three-day weekend (for Gandhi's birthday) trip to Orchha and Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh for a while now. So here is Part I: Orchha...

It rained almost my entire time in Orchha, so I didn't do much sightseeing. The streets turned into shin-high rivers and stairs into waterfalls. I visited one palace and that was about it (though there was another palace, a few temples, and chhaatris (cenotaphs)). Oh well. For pictures of the palace and other pictures of Orchha, visit my Picasa page: http://picasaweb.google.com/egorbaty/Orchha#

While walking around the village, a 10-year-old girl came up to me trying to sell me things. This is not unusual at all, but she wouldn't leave me alone. So I decided to change the subject away from her souvenirs. I asked her if she went to school, and she said yes. She got so excited by my interest in her schooling that she took me to her street and went inside her house to get her books and show me. She then asked me if I liked henna,* and I said of course! Well, this was a mistake. She ran around the corner and returned with eight more children, one of which was armed with a henna* cone. Without asking if I wanted any henna,* she and a few others grabbed my hand. I tried to protest, but there were so many kids and there was nothing I could do about it.

After the henna* attack, one of the girls invited everyone to her father's restaurant for chai (and by restaurant, I mean the grungy hole-in-the-wall type). On our walk over, a few other kids came up to me to try to sell me souvenirs. But the henna* warriors told them not to bother me, because "yeh humari dost hai!" (she is our friend). It was very cute. And then the chai was excellent. Unfortunately, however, the chai pit stop gave the henna* time to dry (I had intended to wash it off ASAP) so that I am now stuck with the world's worst henna on my skin.

Some of the children who attacked me with henna.* There were a few more not pictured.

Lesson learned: do not allow children to doodle on your skin with henna.* ...It doesn't wash off.
(Regarding the frizz: your hair wouldn't look any better after an overnight train + bus ride + strong winds + endless rain)

Because it was raining too hard to sightsee, I decided to go hole-in-the-wall hopping. I went from one place to another, trying a samosa in one, poori in another, chai in another, talking to the cooks and waiters in Hindi (or, rather, attempting to). Until, to my surprise, I ran into this:

That is Korean. In an Indian village. Curious, I went inside and asked to see a menu. This too was in Korean, complete with cutesy Korean-style rainbow and clouds:

I tried to explain in Hindi that my friend was studying Korean and spent her summer in Korea, but the waiter seemed unexcited. So I changed my story and said my friend was from Korea--even though she is from Kuwait--and he was much more excited about this. (It apparently didn't matter that a Korean spending her summer learning Korean made no sense.) I asked him why he had Korean signs and a Korean menu (complete with "gimchee," which I assume is kimchi), and he said that Orchha sees a lot of Korean tourists. And alas, as I was leaving, a Korean woman walked in.

A post about Gwalior is up next, so stay tuned.

*I do not know the difference between henna and mehndi. I used the term henna here because that is what we tend to say in the West, but I actually do not know which term is correct.