Blogs from Aurangabad, Maharashtra, India, Asia - page 7

With Ellora being only 45 minutes away from Aurangabad by bus, I decided to brave the public bus system again and was rewarded with a comfortable seat and a pleasant journey. The caves at Ellora, which are apparently the most visited site in the state of Maharashtra, are all in a row along a 2km ridge. With the exception of the Kailash Temple, the caves are temples or living quarters carved out of the solid rock. They contain statues and friezes executed with great skill, and the earliest date from the 5th century AD. The first few are Buddhist, then (arguably the most impressive) Hindu, and finally Jain - though the Jain ones are somewhat further afield, and by the time I had reached the point where visiting them would be the next logical thing to ... read more

Just a whistle stop here for me unfortunatly as I only had 10days left in india and wanted to at least see a couple of other places before i left. I arrived at about 4am off the train with a Japanese girl and an English guy who had just arrived in India. I went to a hotel with them where they checked in (i was leaving that night so didn't) and kipped on the floor for a couple of hours. Visiting the sites here (some really impressive caves and a fort) really warrants at least a couple of days but I'd seen lots of that sort of thing already so picked the best area and jumped on a bus later that morning with the english guy. The place is pretty amazing and normally people compare it ... read more

We arrived in Aurangabad at 6am, stinky and smelly since we had slept all night in the train. However, as we dismounted from the train we realised it didn't matter how bad we smelt, because this city smelt even worse. Take 1 tonne of rotten vegetables, smush it together we a few million decaying fish and then set the whole thing on fire and you kind of start to get the smell of Aurangabad. This city should really be called A-rank-a-bad. The main reason we were in Aurangabad was to see the famous Ellora temple caves. This consisted of 34 temples that were literally hewn out of the side of a mountain. And they weren't small. The biggest was in fact as large as a 10 story building and probably just as deep. These were temple ... read more

So much has happened over this last week that I'll never be able to write it all down so I'll just give you a rough outline of what I've been up to. I had a fantastic time in Bombay! As soon as I stepped off the train I loved it. Unlike most Indian cities, which tend to be just a polluted urban sprawl, Bombay has character! Indeed with its red double deckers and colonial architecture I almost felt like I was in London! I spent a few days there and in that time I had a look at the ruins on Elephanta island, saw the amazing dhobi wallahs (washer men) at work, went to see Shar Rukh Kan's new film Veer-Zaara (the best bollywood film I've ever seen!), was proposed to on Chowpatty beach(!!!!), and became ... read more