Ajanta and Ellora caves

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Ajanta

Rindi arrived on 4th October and we left on 5th October to Aurangabad, Maharastra. This was the first stop on our trip. We were delayed (about 80%!o(MISSING)f all flights on our trip were delayed) and we missed our connection to Aurangabad. We had to spend one night in Mumbai at Hotel Airport International. I ordered American Chop Suey here which was the worst decision I made regarding food during the entire trip. Rindi made the comment that I should not order anything in the future that is twice removed from it's origin. She is wise! Even though we were in the airport for a short duration, we saw some Bollywood stars (no big names though).

We got on an early flight from Mumbai to Aurangabad and headed to Ajanta caves soon after. Our guide, Radhika who is probably in her 60's had trekked on the Himalayas several times including one to the base camp of Everest. She has written 3 books in Marathi about the subject.

The caves were discovered by John Smith during a hunting trip in 1819. 29 caves have been excavated although there were 85 originally.

Ajanta caves, a world heritage site is on the face of a ravine at the bottom of which flows the Waghur river. The caves date back around 200 BC to 650 AD (construction had stopped for many years in between). There are several Buddhist viharas (monastic halls of residence) and chaitya-grihas (stupa monument halls) here. Stupas are always built with a relic of Buddha inside. The first few are from the Hinayana period (no image worship) and the later ones are from the Mahayana period (image worship). The Ajanta temperas (similar to frescoes, but not quite) were actually quite stunning as were the sculptures built by Buddhist monks with the help of simple tools. The caves are all monolithic, granite structures.

Ellora
The Ellora caves, also a world heritage site were built by the Rashtrakutas between 600 and 1000 AD. There are Buddhist, Jain and Hindu rock cut temples here. The biggest and most impressive was the Kailashnath temple, the world's largest monolithic structure. Most of the Hindu temples only have sculptures of Shiva except for the Kailashnath template where there are carvings of the Ramayana, Mahabharata, Laxmi and Ganesh. One interesting thing I learned was to differentiate between Jain and Buddhist figures. Buddhist figures are never naked and Jain figures have a diamond on their chest.

It was election time in Maharashtra. So we saw Sonia Gandhi in the Aurangabad airport waiting for our flight to Delhi. I have to say, even small airports in India are pretty clean and functional. One other thing, AI was our best airline pick throughout (we didn't take Kingfisher). They were mostly on time, had good leg room, a complimentary meal and sometimes even individual movie screens with 3 hour Bollywood movies. Our flight duration was pretty short and so I don't know how the movie Delhi-6 ends and Rindi doesn't know how Rang De Basanti ends.

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Photos

One of the few pics of the 2 of us
Both of us don't like being in pics

reason for the acoustics inside the stupa
Creates a nice echo when praying inside a stupa

Comments

[T.MADHAVARAJ]

The photography is excellent.