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I’ve been trying to keep my rants to a minimum in the blogs, just to keep them shorter. But, to add a little color to this one: I went to eat breakfast before our trip to the Ajanta caves. As part of the set meal I got cornflakes with milk and coffee. First, they didn’t have any milk; they ran out after serving Darren and Ben five minutes before me. They were the first two people in the restaurant… and they ran out after they were served. They had to send someone to the store to get some more. They were well prepared for the day. When they brought it out it was piping hot (while my coffee was marginally luke warm). I asked them to bring out cold milk for the cereal, as boiled milk is a travesty on cereal. He returned five minutes later with warm milk. Not piping hot, but warmer than room temperature; it was still hotter than my coffee. How hard is it to get cold milk, I wanted to ask. I mean, do they keep the milk in oven? It needs to be cold to stay, so what the heck are they doing to the
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Ajanta is known for the preservation of its paintings (seen in the background here) due to its remote location and dug in caves milk? How can’t I get cold milk for my cereal? These are all questions you laugh about later, but as it is happening you know to take it with a grain of salt. It was as good as I was going to get, after all I am in India, so I dealt with it. Obviously warm milk for cereal isn’t a big deal, I’m just using it as an example of what traveling in India is like. Something of this nature happens at every meal, every bus and train journey, every time you walk down the street, basically every time you leave your hotel room.
Anyway, on the first full day we headed up to Ajanta. It is about a two-hour bus ride away. We could have done it on local transport, bus since we were going to get a guide anyway, we figured it would be just as easy to pay for a tour the full way. The sight is absolutely incredible. There are vast planes the entire ride there, right up until you get to the sight. You suddenly descend a series of cliffs and end up on a valley floor. A short climb up onto the
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The lighting in the caves was a bit Indiana Jones-ish at times... outer wall of a horse-shoe shaped bend in the river and you are in the middle of a series of caves housing beautiful Buddhist carvings and paintings dating from as early as the second century B.C. It was absolutely surreal; unlike anything I had seen before. The monks must have spent lifetimes digging into the basalt cliffs, chipping away into the stone cliffs from top to bottom, front to back, making fantastic carvings out of the rock. Once they finally got the rooms carved out, then they began painting the rooms; some of the paintings covered every inch of the room, ceiling included. I found the paintings fantastic as the artistic devices used were much more advanced than those found in Europe at the same time. Their use of depth perception to depict foreground and background and their rendering of human (and animal) form was much more realistic than what the Europeans were doing in the 900s. (This is what a liberal arts degree gets you; Art History 101 kids.)
One quick thing I will mention, is that while normally I hate having to pay the “foreigner” price for anything, I was completely fine with it here. The price
for locals is ten rupees, about 25 cents. For foreigners it is 250 rupees, about six bucks. However, the site was in great shape, was well taken care of, and I know that without the foreigners bearing most of the weight there, it wouldn’t be as well preserved. It was a UNESCO World Heritage site, so they may have pitched in, but then again, so was Halong Bay and that place was disgustingly polluted.
We headed to Ellora on the following day. The site, while also being a series of caves with religious significance, is extremely different. While Ajanta is carved into a steep canyon wall, Ellora is largely dug out of the side of a hill. This required much more excavation, digging directly downwards from above and then into the hill to create the caverns with large courtyards in front. Also, Ellora has not only Buddhist caves, like Ajanta, but also Hindu and Jain. This spices things up a bit; after a while, Buddha in a lotus position gets a little redundant. The Hindu caves were much grander with larger sculptures and relayed the epic tales of the Hindu tradition. The Jain caves I found to be much
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A nice view of how the caves at Ajanta were dug into the cliff walls smaller, but much more detailed and well preserved.
We hired a guide and it proved to be well worth the extra money. He was extremely knowledgable and explained many things we were unfamiliar with, such as the Hindu iconography and stories behind the carvings. One of the most memorable experiences was going into one of the Buddhist caves and our guide performing a Pali (the ancient language of Buddhist tradition, like Latin for Catholics) Buddhist prayer chant. It reverberated throughout the cavern like nothing I’ve ever heard before. It raised goosebumps. It is easy to understand how a dozen monks chanting these prayers in the 700s would have easily inspired one to become religious.
The most striking monument at Ellora is the Kailasa Temple. It is an enormous Hindu temple from the 8th century. It is absolutely enormous and the amount of man-power and devotion it took to construct is remarkable. They started on top of a huge hill and just started digging and chipping their way down, gradually chipping around what would become a temple in the middle as they went; so the entire temple is made of a single piece of rock. It is the world’s
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One of the earliest caves at Ajanta, around the second century B.C. They didn't believe in Buddha idols in this period, so this is what they came up with... largest monolithic structure. Our guide informed us that it is 80 meters long by 60 meters wide and 33 meters tall. It took between 6 and 8 generations of 2,000 workers to complete excavation and carvings. By the time it was finished, over 200,000 tons of rock had been removed from the side of the hill. Oh, and everything was done with a hammer and a chisel. It makes Mt. Rushmore look like a child’s art project in its detail, magnificence, and worksmanship. I ended up taking tons of photos, so hopefully this sampling will help show how amazing this place was.
The last week’s sites of Hampi, Ajanta, and Ellora are among my favorite so far on this trip. They are absolutely stunning, but exhausting. The sun has just relentless. And then, in this tired daze, we headed to Mumbai, a leader among the candidates for craziest city in the world, on a night train. However, as we were waiting for our 11:15 pm departure, we heard over the loudspeaker that the train had been indefinitely delayed and that more information would be forthcoming. Of course, we trusted that more information would be forthcoming, which was idiotic as
of course no information was going to come! What were we thinking to believe the announcement!?! We finally got word around 2 am that our train wouldn't show up until 7:15. We were told that would be the first train to Mumbai. After a 4:15 and 6:00 am train left for Mumbai, our train showed up at 9:15. The number of circular conversations we had with the conductors, managers, and locals about the departure times and the various trains to Mumbai that led to absolutely no where was astounding. I wish I could describe it, but I'm still in shock as it was only last night. I might try to cover it in my next blog, where I intend to reflect (i.e. rant) on some of the more ridiculous things one encounters while traveling in India...
As for Mumbai, I will say it is fantastic being in a city again. I love the countryside no matter where I am. However, the energy of the city is just fantastic to be a part of again. We saw a Deutsche Bank on the drive in today. I have no affinity to the bank, but for some reason, knowing that a large,
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A good look at how ornate some of the entrances can be international bank was in the city provided some weird form of comfort. Anyway, we have a few days seeing the sites, and then a glorious two days hanging out at the JW Marriott taking in the air conditioning, pools, spas, excellent food, and Bollywood starlets. It will be a much deserved respite from the craziness of the past month and, I'm sure, the next two months.
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Jessica Bernard
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art history
hey boys! thanks for the update and the amazing pics. i just busted out my Buddhist Art and Architecture book and i can not believe you are seeing all of the sites in the book. what an incredible experience! enjoy! Love, Jess