Khajuraho Orchha

A thousand years ago, Khajuraho was a flourishing temple town that lay at the heart of the Chandella kingdom. Mahoba and the fort of Kalinjar were its power centres, but it was in Khajuraho that the greatly chronicled Chandella dynasty chose to build its temples. Today, many of the reasons for choosing Khajuraho as a site for the kingdom's great temple building remain obscure. A small village in the Chattarpur district of Madhya Pradesh, Khajuraho is all but surrounded by wilderness in the midst of a hilly forested belt. When the Chandellas declined in power, Khajuraho for all practical purposes, was lost to the world, its magnificent temples succumbing to centuries of abandonment.