Orchha Places to see

There are some places in India which have stood the test of time and have grown in popularity and fame by their sheer grandeur. Orchha in Madhya Pradesh is one such example of a legacy coming alive. For here lies a city which tells us the tallest legendary tales and here is a city of the medieval age which gives the ultimate in travel excitement.

The entire city of Orchha seems to be captivated in stone and it looks as if time just froze here. A city of the Bundela rulers sometime in the 16th and the 17th centuries, this today still exudes the same amount of perfection it used to in earlier times.

It was the Rajput Chief Rudra Pratap who discovered this piece of land lying here along the River Betwa and who founded this kingdom belonging to the 16th century. Raja Bir Singh Ju Deo is the one who built the very magnificent Jahangir Mahal and who loved the sight of the beautiful decorations on his constructions. So the tiered palace with its lovely chhatris seemed to exude a great deal of royal grandeur which the tourists finds hard to resist.

The interiors of these Bundela constructions are exquisitely carved and decorated with the best styles of painting. It is the Bundela School of painting that was adopted here. When I went here with my colleagues I was surely totally taken in by the sheer magnificence of the entire place. So with the Laxminarayan temple and the Raj Mahal exuding the most vibrant colours, the murals that formed a part of the entire construction here lend beauty to the eye. It looked as if the ceilings and the walls came alive.

The Bundela dynasty goes back to the time of the 11th century and started when a Rajput prince offered himself in the form of a sacrifice to Vrindavani a goddess. She stopped this king from sacrificing himself and named him Bundela because of which the place got the name Bundela. Bundela means the one who offers blood. This Bundela ruler then started a dynasty here and the Bundela kingdom was between the  and the River Yamuna. The Bundelas then moved to Orchha which means hidden. It was Raja Rudra Pratap who built the Raj Mahal or the palace with a lot of devotion.

Orchha can be reached by road, rail and air. Gwalior is the nearest airport and Jhansi is the nearest railway station. It is also accessed by road. We reached Orchha by flight and soon we were traveling from Gwalior to Orchha.

The next day we went around the place and we were quite struck by what we saw. We first went to the Jahangir Mahal. This was a beautiful construction of the 17th century and was constructed by Raja Bir Singh Ju Deo. It was built in memory of the visit of Emperor Jahangir to Orchha. The lovely and fascinating chhatris and the beautiful trellis work are a tourist’s delight and the entire place seems to resound with the past history here.

Later we visited the very popular Raj Mahal,this is a great construction of those times and has the best combination of history, culture and great architecture. This was a palace built in the 17th century by the predecessor of Bir Singh Deo. There is something very intriguing about the simple exteriors and the extravagant interiors.

Out next destination was the Rai Parveen Mahal. This is a hub of poets, musicians and other patrons of art. Rai Parveen was the paramour of Raja Indramani. The Mughal Emperor Akbar was smitten by her and asked her to visit the court. But the queen expressed her love only for the King Indramani and impressed by this love, Akbar sent her back. Then Akbar got this palace built for her, which is a total paradise of two storeys coming till the place where the trees end and the beauty of the surroundings alongwith the sculptural magnificence is something to be seen to be believed. The beauty of this monument is to be seen to be believed.

Then we went to the Chaturbhuj temple. This is a place which had great constructional elegance and a lot of architectural beauty. This temple has been specially constructed to install the image of Lord Rama that was in the Ram Raja temple. With lotus emblems and many other religious symbols this is a great example of lovely ornamentation and graceful decoration. The deep sanctity that exists here coupled with the lovely vaulted walls enhance the beauty of the place and we went back with a lot of travel memories.

The Laxminarayan temple was the next stop. Here we saw a path that linked both the temples – the Laxminarayan and the Ram Raja temple. The beautiful interiors along with the lovely exquisite wall paintings gave a lot of impressive artistic forms and these vibrant combinations of artistic elegance is what made the entire visit greatly fruitful. This temple has been preserved very well and has he best colours to show the vivid variety that exists here.

Then there is the Ram Raja temple, the Dinmal Hardaul palace, the Phool Bagh, and many other places of visit. Orchha gives the best travel pleasures to all those who come to this part of the world.