Ellora

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Meeting at the hotel for an all you can eat breakfast buffet - omlettes cooked to order in front of you, we planned our visit to Ellora and opted again to travel by local bus. It's much cheaper and also more of an experience but I so wish I could communicate with the other passengers, my Hindi is limited to danyavaad and namaste, still you can have some interesting conversations with hand gestures and facial expressions.

I wasn't sure what to expect of the caves, the setting is not as remote as Ajanta, and I'd been told there were more tourists and touts, but it was awe inspiring. There are 34 'caves' along a gently sloping escarpment, where generations of monks over 5 Centuries have carved out monastries, chapels and temples from the rock face - Jain, Buddhist and Hindu, all co-existiting in religious tolerance... I imagine they were probably to knackered to do anything else! The winner for sheer scale has to be the Hindu's. Cave 16, the Kailasa Temple, was jaw droppingly, dedicated to Shiva it is the worlds largest monolithic sculpture which took over 150 years to build and 7,000 labourers, me thinks the monks might have been the Chiefs not the Indians. They built downwards into a single slab of rock, about 25 m deep, carving out rooms, alters, deities, life size elephants, tigers, bulls and beasts on various levels to leave a freestanding temple in the centre. To get a real perspective of the work undertaken, it's best viewed from the top perimeter edge and fighting back a sudden attack of vertigo as we climbed up the rock face later in the afternoon we reached the top, such craftsmanship, there really was no allowance for error.

We wandered around the caves, stopping on the way for an impromptu photo shoot; a group of school children pleaded with us until we agreed to have a group photo and we soon found ourselves inundated with requests, literally climbing up the temple walls to escape, until we noticed the snappers above - pure paparazzi!

Ambling along we found ourselves stranded on top of the escarpment with no way down and headed off to find a route, weaving our way along the bush, finding tracks that disappeared as quickly as they had appeared until we stumbled across the top of a waterfall with shallow hollows filled with water dyed green by the algae and surrounded by little individual sleeping or storage cells. Refreshed we continue our search, thankfully Helen was a Gold Duke of Edinburgh veteran, until we stumbled down a steep patch to the base of furthest Jain cave and escaped inside from the sun. Once again the caves were filled with stone statues - round breasted women and warrior like men, and intricately patterned columns, walls and steps.

Returning to the entrance and glugging down a much needed Sprite, I noticed all the Indian tourists carrying huge bags and tiffin boxes, they rarely travel lightly, perferring to picnic in style life - like an oldfashioned picnic outing - rugs, food, chairs, parasols, the whole shabang. I looked enviously on as I munched my way through a crushed packet of tomato crisps.

Back to Aurangabad and success at last... I found a whole shop selling English books. I sat back and waited for my night train to Mumbai (Bombay), having spent 2 hours in the train station getting frustrated as I tried to buy my onward tickets to Goa - no womens queue in this town.

We didn't depart until almost midnight, but this time I was definitely on the right train and finding myself in a carriage full of successful business men all playing with thier blackberry and mobiles, I settled down to sleep, content in the knowledge that there was nothing in my rucksack that they would want.

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