Ajanta Caves

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My visit to Ajanta Caves came about after having picked up an old had-it Lonely Planet from a hostel in Varanasi. Having come to realise that I wouldn't be able to wing it around India by myself, or better put that I would have a lot better time If I did some planning, I had succumbed to getting a hold of a Lonely Planet on India. With a 11 week time limit and a realisation that I probably wouldn't be back in India again, I decided I needed to orientate myself and get some idea of what India had to offer, in order to best use my time.

It was a good decision, as India is one place that I have been where I really needed the aid of a guide book. So yeah, it basically had Ajanta Caves as a highlight and as it was halfway between where I was (Bhopal) and where I wanted to get to (Hyderabad) I decided it would make a nice stopover.

After an overnight train journey from Bhopal to Jalgaon, I wearily made my way to a bus station, which was as it turned out a long way away from the train station. From there I took a local bus to Ajanta Caves. Local buses and trains in India are one of the most interesting experiences and highlights of travelling there.

Up until this point I had had varying experiences. The first train I took, from Delhi to Agra was with a special tourist ticket and was basically like a train you would take anywhere in the world, except that you had lunch included in an an already ridiculously cheap price. The second train from Agra to Varanasi was a more authentic, local experience, except I found myself with a group of Israelis and Englishmen. Each train has a set amount of tickets set aside for tourists, which is an advantage of being a tourist in India. Getting a ticket for an Indian can mean having to book 6 months in advance, the demand is so great. Once you have figured out the train system in India, which many tourists I met in India never seem to have managed, it is possibly the best in the world as far as looking after foreigners is concerned. Basically all you need to do is go to the tourist section at the train station two days before departure and you will get a ticket from the tourist quota, at the normal price, irrespective of whether the train has been fully booked for the previous 10 months. Of course not all train stations in India have this tourist section, but pretty much all the major ones do. The train I took from Varanasi to Khajuraho was another experience in itself. There was basically a train carriage of tourists, which had two Indian policeman stationed at either end acting as security. It was the quietest journey I had while in India and was the way it was, due to a spate of robberies over the previous years on that tourist route.

I got to Bhopal, taking my first tourist bus and what I swore after would be my last. I spent roughly double what a train travelling the equivalent distance would have cost and for my expense I got roughly a tenth of the sleep I would have got on a train. I had my own bed-booth in the back corner of the bus, but the most comfortable bed in the world wouldn't have been able to negate the bumps, pot holes and bunkers we went over that night. After going over one bump which saw me springboarded a metre in the air, straight into the bus's roof, I forfeited my bed and sat in one of the vacant seats below where I bounced the night away.

On the pilgrimage to Vindhyachal I took my first local buses. This was where I learned that there are no such things as bus timetables in India. Basically the drivers wait at each stop until the bus is full and then drive the route, stopping at every stop until the bus is approximately three times fuller than the maximum legal capacity written on the dashboard at the front of the bus. If it doesn't get this full the bus literally stops every 50 metres until it is so.

Going to Ajanta was a continuation of this local bus experience and with my three backpacks in tow, it was another character building part of my trip to India. On arriving there, I had to pay an amenities fee, for a tacky tourist market, I didn't want anything to do with and then I was allowed to board a bus to get to the point of my excursion - Ajanta Caves.

Once there I dropped my bags of at baggage storage and explored some of the 29 Buddhist caves that date from the 2nd century BC. Luck was on my side again, as I met a friendly French girl, at the entrance to do the exploring with and my three hours there passed by very quickly.

"The Ajanta Caves were carved in the 2nd century BC out of a horseshoe-shaped cliff along the Waghora River. They were used by Buddhist monks as prayer halls (chaitya grihas) and monasteries (viharas) for about nine centuries, then abruptly abandoned. They fell into oblivion until they were rediscovered in 1819."

"Preserved inside the caves are many masterpieces of Buddhist art. Some reflect the earlier Theravada tradition of depicting the Buddha only in symbolic form such as a throne or footprints. Others, the Mahayana caves, feature colorful murals and statues depicting the life (and former lives) of the Buddha and various Bodhisattvas. The caves also depict scenes from everyday life and many include inscriptions indicating a prince or noble who gifted the cave to the monks"

The caves were very nice....

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