Chasing The Tiger

On the trail of the elusive Bengal tiger in India’s Madhya Pradesh, Kendall Hill finds the search for the big cat is its own reward.

- Kendall Hill

The flatulent Mr Rajput is guiding me through the sublime thousand-year-old temples of Khajuraho on an otherwise hushed summer’s morning in Madhya Pradesh. Madhya means centre, he explains; pradesh means region. “Now you are most welcome in the heart of India!” he declares with a spicy breakfast belch.

From Australia it has taken three flights and two days to reach these masterpieces of Indian art; Khajuraho’s isolation has always been its greatest protection against marauding invaders. The temples were overgrown and had been nigh on forgotten for centuries when the British engineer TS Burt stumbled across them in 1838.

In its heyday this treasury of the Chandella dynasty comprised more than 80 temples, built by successive rulers between 900 and the mid-11th century and adorned with meticulously rendered scenes of court life. Today only about 20 survive, and the finest are contained in the World Heritage-listed western group, in open parklands beside a crumbling maharaja’s palace.

“A thousand years on, and you can still see the facial expressions perfectly,” Mr Rajput says, using a compact mirror and the sun’s reflection to spotlight a nymph’s suggestively raised eyebrow, carved into the golden sandstone by gifted artisans a millennium ago.

The most beautiful artworks adorn the Lakshmana temple, one of the earliest of these stone wonders. Mr Rajput claims it took 2,500 craftsmen about 20 years to chisel its diorama of orgies, gods and ordinary lives.