Cave man

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March 3rd 2006

Published: March 25th 2006

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Jabe

Ajanta

Runway to Buddha

With Ajanta being a good 3.5 hours away by public transport, I succumbed to the lure of a taxi, which managed to get there in about 1.75 hours and was only about 500 times more expensive than the bus. You can only get to an area called Ajanta T-junction via your own transport, and from there you have to take one of the special buses the remaining 4 or 5 kilometres to the caves themselves. To get to the buses from the car park, you have to run the gauntlet of a small community of persistent souvenir vendors. In fact, you may well find someone opening your car door to let you out - they are not doing this out of the goodness of their heart, rather to have first crack at some fresh tourist blood. My own journey from the taxi to the special buses was with the accompaniment of a gentleman who gave me a brief history of Ajanta then, as I was getting on the bus, tried to make me promise I'd buy some gems from him on my way back.

The ticket booth for the caves was hidden away at the top of a short hill

Ajanta

Buddhas

climb. The site is even more compact than Ellora, with only about 1 kilometre between the first and last of the caves spread out along the side of a horseshoe valley. All the caves at Ajanta are Buddhist, with the earliest excavations dating from the 2nd century BC. The site was abandoned for reasons unknown in the 7th century AD.

The great attraction of Ajanta is the murals and paintings in the various caves (however I thought the sculptures and other structures within them were as interesting as anything at Ellora bar the Kailash temple.) These depict scenes from the life of Buddha as well as some on a Hindu theme. Flash photography is not allowed, but fortunately soft lighting has been installed to illuminate the more significant sculptures and paintings. You can also use your own torch to pick out details on the walls and ceilings.

Like with many places, photographs give a much better description than any words could. Unfortunately I am not a master of low-light photography, so my own attempts at taking some decent shots were not particularly successful. In words, then - the detail of the paintings that you can see in the

Ajanta

Ceiling

dim light is impressive, and you end up wondering just how it would all look in some bright light. The painters and sculptors from times long ago really made things difficult for themselves by attempting this with only reflected light from outside to illuminate their work, but the results are astonishing. I suspect this will make my Top 10 best sights list for India.

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