Ellora/ Chillin'

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Nabil and I went out for our day trip to the Ellora caves and left in the morning. We took a rickshaw to the bus station, but this time we actually took a bus. Im glad we did so that I could have the experience of taking a government bus over a short distance. Aaron was saying that they had taken a government bus for a 5 hour trip - not an exciting proposition - but it was fun for our half-hour voyage. The bus was quite rickity and I was quite pleased when we pulled up near the caves.

There are a whole lot of caves at Ellora. The first ones that we visited were Buddhist, and most were in the same style as the caves in Ajunta, though the Ajunta Buddhist caves were better. There are something like 12 Buddhist caves if I remember correctly. Anyway, throughout the morning we were never asked for a ticket, which we thought was really quite odd. Everywhere else they had been quite on top of things and making sure we gave them every rupee they could get. So we wandered around for the morning and saw some caves. We began to get hungry so we found at first a canteen right near the caves. As we were walking there we got a very strong whiff of urine, and when we got there and saw lots of flies, we thought better of eating there. The Maharashtra Tourism Development Comission has a restaurant at the Ellora caves and we ate there. The Thali was tolerable and it was good to relax and chat for a bit.

After lunch we quickly understood why they do not check tickets for anything but the Kailasa. The Kailasa is a huge, gargantuan temple that has to be seen to be believed. This thing is massive and I cant possibly do it justice. All of it was carved out of the cliff-face over a period of 100 years with the use of slave labor. It is a sight not to be missed.

We continued walking around the temple complex, following the line of temples. Sometimes we had to scramble over little hills to get to the next temple, and it was looking very strongly like it was going to thunderstorm, so this made us a bit nervous sometimes.

To get from the last Hindu temple (they built the Kailasa to show up the Buddhists), to the Jain temples, there were two paths. Either you could walk back to the road, along another road, and then a third road, all of which took a few km. Or.... you could walk along a narrow and precarious path that has a cliff face on your right side and a dropoff on your left. There really wasnt any choice in the matter. Aaron and I set out, without further consultation, and found the going to be ok. In fact there was a small temple set into the wall of the cliff. We were fine with the exception of a small rock scramble that was quite slippery. It was lightly raining at this time to make it more interesting. We scrambled up the stone and climbed up the steps to the temple. A group of Indians had gathered to see what us stupid Americans were getting into. As we climbed the steps they all began to clap and one of the guys said to nabil as he reached the top, "You've got a lot of guts" It was pretty dangerous, and we probably would have been ok, had we fallen, but it was quite an adventure.

We saw the last remaining Jain temples, walked back to the entrance, and waited for a share jeep to take us back to Aurungabad. Near the entrance to the Ellora complex were a host of monkeys, though these looked different. Unlike the monkeys at Jaipur, these were white with black faces and rears. I meant to get a photo but it was raining and I didnt want to chance it.

In our share jeep, we wandered around Ellora for quite some time, and in the process we had 4 different drivers. We werent sure what was going on, but at the end we were fairly comfortable in the middle seat, the 4 of us, while there were 6 people in the front seat, and the car has a manual transmission, so one guy was straddling the stick. The back was filled like a sardine can with people. On top of this, they were blaring Hindi music. It was a lot of fun.

The next day Nabil and I decided on a rest day again. I was feeling a little unwell when we woke up , a pretty common thing for me in India, and we decided to wander around Aurungabad rather than do anything crazy. Nabil made a couple of phone calls while I read, and then we went on another quest.

This time our quest was for a belt. I have lost weight on this trip, and that combined with hand-washing and drying of my clothes has left my clothes quite a bit larger. It is amazing how hard it is to find a belt in Aurungabad. We wandered for a long time getting constantly redirected to other places. In the end we gave up, but the adventure was enjoyable. I think that would be a fun thing to do, to go on a scavenger hunt in another country and look for common things in stores.

We took the 11:30pm train to Mumbai and it departed only about 15 minutes late, pretty good track record for us on this journey.

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Photos

The treacherous path
You can just barely make out the path that goes from the bottom of the stairs along the bottom of the cave

Comments

[Sally]

Hi
Terrific Ian, See you later today!!!!!!