The ancient caves of Ellora

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On February 6th we left Bharatpur, took a taxi to the Agra train station, and boarded our 18-hour train to Aurangabad, which is a short distance from Ellora, our next destination. We took an air-conditioned sleeper car to increase our chances of getting a decent night’s sleep. Although it’s nice to be air-conditioned for sleeping, I spent a lot of the next day standing in the space between cars by the open door, feeling the sun and wind and watching the land go by. They served us dinner and breakfast, both of which were actually quite good, and they gave us sheets and pillows to use for the night. I slept alright, although Jeff was kept awake by a neighbor’s incessant snoring.

We got into Aurangabad early afternoon of the 7th and immediately got a taxi to Ellora. It was maybe a 45 minute drive through sandy cliffs and along winding hilly roads. The area looked a lot like the southwestern United States, with its dry cliffs and scattered shrubby trees. Ten minutes outside of Ellora we passed “H20 Water Park,” which was a bizarrely isolated jumble of bright blue plastic slides set in a valley between barren, uninhabited cliffs, looking modern, artificial and completely out of place but also unbelievably tempting in such a dry, sandy landscape. We got into Ellora and had our taxi driver drop us off in front of what used to be Vijay’s Rock Garden guesthouse but is now called Vrindavan’s under new ownership, and is one of two hotel options in town. (The other is an overpriced and characterless hotel catering to packaged tour groups.) Our room was grimy and the beds were rock-hard, but it was located very close to the caves, the door and windows locked securely, the ceiling fan worked, and it was cheap: 300 rupees ($7 U.S.) a night. The bathroom, sink and mirror may literally never have been cleaned, there was certainly no western toilet, and a trail of ants paraded through the middle of our room for the first day, busily hauling something imperceptible from the bathroom to the front window. The owner gave us each an extra mattress to add to our hard twin beds, and in the end it wasn’t a bad place to stay.

We decided to get a first look at the caves that afternoon while there were still a few hours of sunlight. The caves contain Buddhist, Jain and Hindu carvings from as early as the 3rd century C.E. Only one cave, the largest and most elaborate, costs anything to enter; the others are open for anyone to wander through at their leisure. We walked to the furthest Buddhist cave and worked our way towards the center. There were remarkably few other people there, and the carvings were stunningly elaborate, with huge stone Buddha figures meditating in deep central chambers and carvings of various gods lining the cave walls. The darker and deeper caves were home to bats, who were often our only accompaniment as we slowly browsed each cave, careful not to miss any of the carvings. Some carvings were crumbling and mostly destroyed from when a Muslim ruler conquered the area, but other figures were nearly perfect, and there were occasional patches of faded paint on the ceilings, a lingering shadow of past splendor. Right before the sun set we arrived in a cave with a high ceiling carved to look like curving wooden support beams, although it looked to me like the ribs of a giant whale. In the back center of the cave was an enormous carving of the seated Buddha, and he was gently lit by the setting sun’s rays. An attendant working there slowly circled the Buddha while singing a prayer and it echoed hauntingly around the circular room, bouncing off of the vaulted ceiling. We met the first other American so far in our travels in that cave, Jay from Los Angeles, who had left the U.S. years ago and has been wandering around India as a Sadhu (renouncer). We left the caves as the sun set and headed back to our guesthouse to eat dinner. The food was decent and the owner sat with us and chatted while we ate. We went to bed fairly early, tired from our long train ride and our hike through the caves.

When we woke up the next morning we decided to check out a large Shiva temple (supposedly one of the best known Shiva temples in India) a few minutes’ walk from our hotel. It cost one rupee (four cents U.S.) to enter the temple, and we were certainly the only non-locals there, since it was a true temple instead of a tourist spot like most of the temples we’ve had a chance to see so far. Large monkeys climbed around the elaborately carved roof and devotees milled around the building and gathered inside for the puja (worship) ceremony. We joined them in waiting for the sadhus to perform the offerings in the central shrine, then took our turn filing through to give an offering and receive prasad, which is a sugar cube placed on your tongue as a return offering from the god. The internal shrine was dark, lit only by candlelight, full of incense and piled with flowers and beads given to Shiva. The experience was amazing, and no one seemed to mind our being there, despite our conspicuousness.

We spent the rest of the day visiting the newer caves, which are both Jain and Hindu and are a decent walk away. (We realized after walking for 20 minutes up a hill in the sun that we probably should have taken a rickshaw like everyone else, but I suppose the hike was good for us.) These caves were also impressive, and we spent most of the day wandering through them. A few hours before sunset we met a local who told us about some un-numbered caves high up above the others on a ridge. We followed him up a hill along a foot-path, along a concrete rain gutter, and up to a ridge with a view of miles of countryside. We arrived at a completely secluded set of caves overlooking a series of small pools, which are the residual of the waterfall that pours down the cliffs during the rainy season. All of the caves were empty of carved figures except for one, which housed a large Ganesha (the Hindu elephant god) painted bright orange by devotees. We sat by the pools and watched as the sun began to set, and Jeff jumped in for a quick swim. We headed back down the path and made it back to our hotel right as the sun disappeared. We still had at least ten caves yet to see, so we decided to stay one more day in Ellora before moving on.

When we got up the next morning we caught a rickshaw into Aurangabad to buy train tickets, since it’s usually impossible to get tickets the day of travel. The little three-wheeled rickshaw struggled a bit on the hills, but we made it to the train station and waited in a long line to get tickets to Goa. The most direct train had no seats available for over two weeks, but we managed to find two trains, one 8 and one 10 hours long, that would take us from Aurangabad to Mumbai and then on to Goa the following day, after a one-night stay in Mumbai. The train from Aurangabad left the station that same night a little after midnight, which wasn’t ideal but it was the best we could find. We bought our tickets then took the rickshaw back to Ellora to spend the afternoon in the remaining caves. We went back to the biggest Buddhist cave first to get photos, and Jeff convinced the guard to let him use a tripod to get a photo, which is usually not allowed but exceptions are happily made with small “donations”. We walked through the caves we hadn’t yet seen, then paid to enter the big central cave just before it closed at sunset. The cave was worth the entry fee: it was in fact less of a cave and more of a small compound of elaborately carved buildings, statues and temples. When the place closed we walked back to our guest house to pack up and eat dinner before taking a taxi back to the Aurangabad train station. During the walk back we stopped to buy water from a little road-side shop, and the vendor asked our names. When he learned that mine was Laura he was thrilled that it so closely resembled the name of the town (Ellora) and rushed to the next shop over to tell them the exciting coincidence. Everywhere we go people seem excited by us, whether by our names, our western clothes, our pale skin or our feeble attempts to respond in our three-word vocabulary of Hindi. Although occasionally it would be nice to blend in and be unnoticed, the attention is generally very welcoming and often entertaining. When we got back to our guesthouse the owner called us a cab, and we piled ourselves and our bags into the car and left Ellora around 10 p.m. to catch our midnight train to Mumbai.

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