exploring Orchha

This post will be fairly short as internet is slow here (dial-up) and plus this internet cafe is about to close. I rented a bicycle here in Orchha and spent the whole day biking around, and I think Orchha is now my favorite place in India. It's a tiny little village, although as usual with a bustling market area, which is right at the base of this tremendous, hundreds of years old temple. But there are so many ruins around here it's ridiculous, anywhere you go it seems you see another huge building off in the distance somewhere. There's a beautiful river that flows nearby, with what looks like pretty clean water and lots of rocks and boulders that makes for good swimming holes, so I went for a swim, on my way up to check out some of the ruins alongside the river. You have to pay to enter the best ones, but I decided to save that for tomorrow and see what I could see today for free. The free ones might even be the better ones because, for one thing there aren't many other people at them, and you can go up these narrow little stairways that lead up to huge open rooms with amazing views of the surrounding valley (don't worry, I shout and whistle first for bats and cobras and other surprises). So I'm not sure how many miles I biked today but I explored in three different directions and definitely didn't hit all of them. So tomorrow I'll probably shell out the 275 rupees (8 bucks or so) to see the better preserved buildings, including a palace and several massive temples, as well as hopefully have time for another swim. It's getting warm around here. Well time's up here, I've gotta run...