Chitrakoot

David: Chitrakoot is a small Hindu pilgrimage town where the god Rama lived for a number of years in self-imposed semi-exile. Lonely Planet says all the trains stop there at stupid o’clock in the morning. When I asked our Hyderabad travel person if wi-fi would be available at our hotel, she said that if we really wanted to go there, we would get hot water at our hotel only if we wanted to buy it by the bucket.We arrived in town a little after 9 pm and checked into the government Tourist Bungalow, which Lonely Planet says is the best place in town. But the Tourist Bungalow had never heard of us. It turns out that Lonely Planet and our agent were referring to the Tourist Bungalow run by Utter Pradesh state. By mistake, the agent had booked us into a place around the corner, the Tourist Bungalow run by Madhya Pradesh state. Only in India.We were fortunate. The Madhya Pradesh operation was fine, and the super deluxe room ($28 per night for a double, breakfast included) came with all the hot water we could use.Chitrakoot turned out to be a great place, in part because it is definitely off the Western tourist itinerary. We didn’t see a single Western person in all of our time there. Everyone in town was either a local, a Hindu making a pilgrimage, or an Indian tourist. There was a downside, however, when we asked our driver where we could eat. “There are no restaurants here for you. You must eat at hotel.” The same hotel where the Corn Flakes at breakfast tasted like they were part of Kellogg’s first production run.There was a big poster map in the Bungalow lobby that showed the location of 6 sites in the general area. We told our driver to pick 3 of them. One was a temple to Rama outside the town. The main feature of the temple is an imposing 20-foot tall statue of the monkey god Hanuman, a devotee of Rama and a very buff guy. The statue depicts Hanuman ripping open his chest and heart to expose an image of Rama in his heart. I can’t imagine a more compelling rendition of “I Give My Heart to Thee.”