You Say It's Yer Birthday

April 8
Khajuraho, India

I had hoped to spend my birthday at the Taj Mahal, which sounded pretty grand. Our travel schedule didn't exactly work out that way, but we ended up at a pretty grand location nonetheless. We were in Khajuraho, the location of some of India's best preserved Hindu temples, dating from the 1st century. It's off season here, with the next 2 months being the hottest and driest before the monsoon comes. Being out midday when temperatures soar above 100 degrees is uncomfortable ill advised. So it was that at 5:30 am on my 35th birthday, I woke up before the sun to go see some sexy temples.

The temples here are famous for one thing: Kama Sutra. The relief sculptures adorning them are impeccably preserved; it seems as though minimal work has been done restoration wise. They also give a glimpse into the minds of the kings who had them built. Birds do it, bees do it, and in India in 1000 AD, people and horses and elephants apparently did it all together. I won't go into detail but let's just say that if some of the sculptures were made in modern times, they would NOT be on display at the Met.

Khajuraho is small by Indian standards, with a rumored 19,000 population (which is small by any standard, but when you consider that India has 1.2 billion people, that's basically saying the town is invisible). It is a few blocks long and basically geared towards tourists, with lots of stores selling trinkets, fabric, clothes, etc. We were befriended by 2 local guys who wanted to make a party for me at the river, which I thought was a nice gesture. Had it been Stacy or Mio's birthdays, we may have spent the afternoon there. But it was my day and the thought of a dusty riverbed with no shade in the middle of nowhere India with 2 strangers yielded one response: thanks, but no thanks. We spent the afternoon at the Radisson's pool, swimming and sipping cocktails.

I had woken up with a cold and felt pretty lousy, so going out and living it up was not really an option because I was beat and, well, there was not really anyplace to go. The town was virtually shut down by 10 PM. We went to dinner at the same restaurant where we'd eaten lunch. My cold was kicking in and I was about to call it a night, when the waiter ran up to our table and asked who's birthday it was. Stacy had asked for a candle without my knowing, and apparently the “surprise” factor was lost on the Indians. I saw ice cream and waffles on the menu, so that's what I expected. Kurt and Mio thought we'd be seeing a giant wax candle in some rendition of bananas foster, which was also on the menu. What was brought upstairs by the entire staff of the restaurants was pretty remarkable – an entire chocolate ice cream cake adorned in not only chocolate chips, but with my name proudly written in chocolate sauce! Apparently this place had the cake sitting in the bottom of the freezer, fully wrapped and boxed. The staff told me that if they had known it was my birthday at lunch, they would have prepared a dance for the occasion. I was blown away, and pretty psyched to be eating chocolate ice cream. If you've never been sitting at the only table in a restaurant in the middle of India being serenaded “Happy Birthday” by a bunch of dudes in broken English, you should try it. It was a trip.