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Published: December 17th 2006
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Hey peeps, i know this blogg has been a long time coming but India is not blessed with an abudance of internet ascess.
Since my last blogg I've been amazed, entertained and moved to tears by sheer fustration in this wierd country. I can't say i've been enjoying myself overly but it is interesting and certianly an experience. This place is so full of contrasts. People have either been horrible and annoying or embaressingly nice. This is confusing as it is easier to either hate (like vietnam) or love (like Laos) and country. But this bloody place requires you to do both at the same time which is asking to much in my opinion. We certianly havn't had a moments peace as everyone seems to have something to say to us (good or bad). Being english I value my space and want to be left alone at least some of the time. However, I also value clear instrucations and people are universally unhelpful and non-commital (they just wobble thier heads- is that a yes or a bloody no?). I don't get the feeling India really welcomes tourists that much either. All the sites are stupidly expensive for foriegners. The Ajanta
caves for example, are 10 rupees for Indians and 250 rupees for white people. I feel this is taking the piss rather. Fair enough if it was free for Indians or locals but charging us 25 times what they charge Indians isn't much of a tourisism addvert really. It's a shock having just been to countries that are desperate for tourists and really go out of their way to welcome us. I get the feeling that India just has so many Indians a few tourists aren't worth bothering about.
Anyway we have seen some cool things which kind of make it a bit better. After Nasik we went to Aurangubad and found a hostel pretty easily. There we met some other backpackers which was reasuring as we havn't met any so far.
On our first day we negociated the public bus and went to the Ellora Caves. These are a set of buddhist, Hindu and Jain cave temples that have been litterally carved out of the cliff. It's hard to beleive it when you see them as they are so presisly contructed they look like they have been built rather than carved. each cave is covered in carvings
and sculptuers. They are several thousand years old I think and lay in disuse for a long time before being re discovered.
People here seem obsessed with boobs! I've read some ascred texts that just go on about boobs and the carvings are a casein point. All the female figuers have imense knockers that rival Jorden any day. Some of the boobs look oddly polished comparied to the rest of the carvings. Dirty buggers!
The coolest thing is the main temple which rivals any at Angkor in terms of size and carftsmenship. It looks like a normal Hindu temple built from the bottom up but it has actually been carved out of the rock face. This involved creating a whole in the rock about 100 feet square while still leaving rock in the middle to carve the temple out of. It doesn't look like much from the outside but inside it is amazing. It was orriginally painted white like the mountian that the Gods Shiva and Pravati live on.
The next day we went further out to the Ajanta Caves. These are Buddhist caves that, like Ellora have been carved out of the rock face. The difference
is that the Ajanta Caves have been decorated with frescos (apparently not technically frescos but you know what I mean). These paintings are agian around 2 thousand years old and where rediscovered by the British. It much have been megga cool to be riding through the shrubland and suddenly find caves full of ancient paintings.
The paintings are very impressive and the low lighting is atmoshperic. The subjects of the paintings are hard to make out but they are still nice to look at. We found one cave that had a really cool echo that was fun (come to think of it I think that was at Ellora).
I would have loads of cool photos to illustrate but the computer just ani't that advanced. When I find a computer that is I will put loads of pics on!
From Aurangubad we then jumped on a night train to Hyderabad. This was a bit of anightmare as the ticket we were sold was a 'reserved against cancellation' ticket. The man who sold it to us failed to tell us this. What it means is that you are allotted a seat in the sleeper car about an hour before
departure. We thought this meant we had beds but it turned out it meant you could sit on a bed with other people. Teoretically the ticket collector is then meant to find you a spare bed but this didn't happen. Luckly a bed next to us didn't get used so we both got a bed and a very little amount of sleep.
grrrrrrrr we know for next time now..........
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Helen w
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Boobs & wobbly heads
see what you mean by the shiney boobs! But they do look very tactile. I think the wobbly head thing means" I want to say no, but I don't want to be impolite", or sometimes "I am not sure", I found you got used to it, but then we were not having to deal with getting about booking rooms etc, that was all taken care of and so were we, without that we might have foungd it frustrating too