Ajanta and Ellora Caves

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August 14th 2008

Published: August 14th 2008

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travelin de

Sleeping Buddha

August 9, 2008

While we were eating breakfast in Jalgon, we got approached by two Canadians wondering if we would like to share a hired car with them to the Ajanta Caves.

Got into the jeep with them, Aruna and Mike and took the hour drive to these caves.

The Ajanta caves are more of a U shape and are quite close together. Some of the caves were pretty cool and interesting because they are really old, some were a little boring! especially the office cave... we found a historical cave that was now a present day office. It took a couple hours to wander through all of them.

We really enjoyed these caves and got along with Aruna and Mike well!

Had a two hour ride to Aurangabad in our comfy jeep, and the four of us checked into the same hotel. We were all so excited to just watch some Olympics after a hectic couple days of travel! Stayed at the Shree Maya Hotel, played some scrabble and ate curries!

August 10, 2008

Mike, Aruna, Dale and I hired a smaller car to get us to the Ellora Caves. (the

Ceiling

better of the two locations)

It was a short ride, maybe 45 minutes to get to these very spread out caves, therefore the driver was very useful! There were many "touts" (the word that Lonely Planet uses to describe people who are trying to rip you off) everywhere! I felt bad for them because it was a really quiet time of the year for them because of the monsoon, so they were desperate to make a sale.

There were three different areas of the caves that were all created by Buddhists, Jains and Hindus. All creating a disctinct feeling and design.

I'm glad that we got to see them both to compare. The Ellora ones were definitely more impressive and I would recommend seeing those if you had to choose between the two.

After the caves we went to a textile factory where they hand make on really old equipment beautiful sawris or scarves. It was interesting, but expensive!

Spent some time at our hotel in the afternoon and discovered that it is a 24 hour hotel. So you check out 24 hours after check in. Very cool.

Went to catch our very uncomfortable

Ajanta Caves1

bus at 1030pm to Mumbai.

August 11, 2008

Arrived in Mumai at 7am and went to Victoria station to leave our bags in storage. Next stop: McDonalds. But they don't have breakfast, and the menu is very restricted since they don't eat beef! So breakfast was a McChicken Meal! It was a really nice McD's so we sat and read the newspaper for a couple hours with the hopes that the rain would stop!

We went to the Stirling Movie Theatre just down the road to see if they had English movies playing later in the day, and we were in luck for Batman at 2:00. In the mean time we hung out at an internet cafe for a few hours and tried to get things done online.

The movie was wicked, included the national anthem to start and an intermission in the middle. After that, we had to head straight for Mumbai Airport to catch our 10pm flight to Muscat, Oman.

We were super confused at Mumbai waiting for our plane though! It seemed like they were supposed to be boarding our flight but when we tried to get on they were like, "

if you're lost- hug an elephant

No, this is Jet Airways." so we went to sit down. Eventually someone came over to us and asked if we were going to Muscat, and that the plane was almost completely boarded! oops!

Opinion of India Airways: Delicious food; decent staff; rock hard seats.

SO HAPPY TO BE IN OMAN! IT IS BEAUTIFUL AND CLEAN AND FANTASTIC! a blog to follow!

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