Our next stop was the small village of Khajuraho. It’s industries includes farming, mining, and tourism. The village has about 15,000 people and I think about 1,000 of them were always trying to sell us something. Khajur means date palms, so the city is the ‘garden of the dates’ and there are still some thick date palm stands around the town. The area was an important area for the Chandelas Rajputs back in the 9th to 12th centuries. Khajuraho was the Chandelas religious and cultural center and also their capital for a brief period. The founders of Khajuraho claim, through legends, to be descendents of the moon.

The main tourist attraction are the temples that the Chandelas constructed mostly between the years 950 and 1050 AD. There were originally 85 temples but only 22 stand today, although there are still more large mounds that haven’t been excavated. Each temple took 20 to 25 years to construct. Our guide said that one reason the temples were constructed here was that the stone was here. These temples have granite platforms or bases and the temples are build of sandstone which came from a quarry 15 miles away. The temples were built with all inter-locking stones and used no mortar. These temples are a UNESCO world heritage site for their archeological significance. The temples were dedicated to Shiva, Vishnu, and Jain patriarchs. The dense forests surrounding these temples evidently hid them which protected them from Muslim conquerors in later centuries who probably would have destroyed them all.

The first photo is a frontal view of one of the temples, which doesn’t show its depth. The second photo shows a different temple, but from its side. As impressive as these temples are from a distance, they keep getting more impressive as you get closer, such as in the third photo. The complexity and the extent of the sculptures just kept getting more pronounced with every step towards each temple.