Frozen in time

Dhruv Saxena heads to India’s second biggest state with the Hyundai Grand i10 Nios to a little known place and gets lost in the magnificence of India’s storied past and natural beauty

- Dhruv Saxena

Just over 100km from Gwalior and a stone’s throw away from Jhansi lies a town that you may have heard of but one that might not have missed the cut on your list of places to visit. No amount of browsing images on the internet can prepare you for the sheer magnitude of history every square metre of Orccha throws at you. Despite the generally boring Yamuna Expressway making up the first half of our drive from Delhi to Orchha, the prospect of getting behind the wheel of a compact hatch with a turbocharged petrol motor and 100 odd horses under the hood kept excitement levels high. And all that power came in quite handy over the truck-infested stretch from Agra to Orchha letting us zip through gaps quickly and effortlessly. Around seven hours and 480km later, we found ourselves driving through a narrow centuries-old gateway, or whatever’s left of, into Orchha’s streets before being greeted by a smorgasbord of age-old architecture replacing the modern day landscape of a busy little town.

ORCHHA’S ROYALS