Mr & Mrs – A blog of our round the world trip travelling through South America and South East Asia » Gallery: The Enchanting Ellora and Amazing Ajanta caves, our first real stop(s)!

Gallery: The Enchanting Ellora and Amazing Ajanta caves, our first real stop(s)!

Posted by Steve on November 25, 2009, at 5:19 pm | Category: India, Photos | 3 comments

Another family who wanted a group photo with us involved, the situation completely spun on its head from other countries we have visited.

After our marathon first twenty four hours in India, we pulled up in Jalgaon train station – our launch pad for the famous Ajanta caves, Buddhist monasteries carved out of the vertical rock face of a horse shoe shaped gorge. Thirsty for more, our next stop would be Aurangabad and the renowned Ellora caves, a fusion of over thirty Hindi, Buddhist and Jain caves signifying the religious harmony that has sporadically yet rarely in India’s history. They are both beautiful for different reasons, and represent something we hope to find more on the second leg of our travels; a completely different approach. Did we avoid getting fleeced by local touts? Were we victim to the notorious Delhi belly after our first Thali? Would the locals go as far as actually asking for our autograph?

Note: 1 GBP = 75 Rupees at time of writing.

Lynette making herself comfortable on our first Indian train, sleeper class.

After an uneventful 2nd class sleeper train journey from Mumbai to Jalgaon (we amazingly slept soundly all the way, snug in our five cubic feet of allotted space) we broke out of the train station and gulped a lungful of the humid Indian air; spices and rickshaw exhaust fumes. Only a hundred yard sweaty stomp took us to our first Indian hotel, Plaza Hotel, described by the Rough Guide as ‘The best budget hotel in India’. We were greeted by the exceptionally polite owner, who after a five minute wait, followed by a tour of every available room (we just wanted the cheapest) proudly told us of the fifteen year history of the hotel, recommended several good restaurants, drew a map of the area, told us how to get to Ajanta in the morning, and even arranged a rickshaw to a good restaurant and to the bus station in the morning.

Some of the bulls are scarily gigantic.

We were only staying one night, but every five minutes he would be at our door or meeting us in the hall to make sure everything was ok, offer us tea, see if we needed hot water, warn us of the power cuts and pretty much everything to ensure his good reputation went unsullied. While the degree of detail was potentially smothering, in retrospect it was charming and something we wouldn’t mind a dash more of in our continuing travels. Our immediate assumption that this was going to be the standard class of service in all of India was however incorrect… The only warning would be that the bed came with the bed sheet itself only, no cover sheet. We vaguely remember somebody mentioning that this crops up more in this side of the world.

During Diwali, female members of the family draw a ‘Kolam’ outside their home using rice powder.

We headed to the recommended restaurant and sat down for our first proper meal in India, immediately over ordering on the gorgeous vegetarian food and walking out with satisfied beach ball bellies for a total of about £4, and meandered back to the hotel via an internet cafe, taking in the beeping traffic, swarming locals bartering and selling and saying hello many times over to the those inquisitive enough to practise their English. An early night, and we were then woken at six in the morning with a cup of rather lovely (to me!) Chai from the manager before we followed his instructions, took a 15Rs rickshaw to the bus station, squeezed on the equivalent of a Springfield school bus and for 40Rs headed to Ajanta caves.

Its true; the locals are fascinated by foreigners and rush to take photos with you at every opportunity… its like being a film star!

We arrived at about 9am, and were the first tourists on the scene, which was a curse in disguise. Immediately swamped by the local tout-brigade while attempting to eat our first curry breakfast, we purchased some beautiful carvings after some hefty negotiation. We later found out we’d still paid about three times too much, and if we see Ali from Ajanta again we’d like to punch him in his friendly head. C’est la vie! If you’re asking, a medium sized carved elephant should cost 800Rs, not 2000Rs… we then headed into the caves themselves, a 7Rs non A/C bus gets you there, and 250Rs gets a foreigner (that’s us) in. Then our curse became a blessing, as the caves themselves were blissfully empty, and gloriously ornate.

Carved from the vertical walls of a horseshoe shaped ravine, the scene is beautiful.

In its prime, Ajanta housed over two hundred Buddhist monks, as well as a large community of painters, sculptors and labourers employed in excavating and decorating the cells and sanctuaries. Their principle victory over Ellora in the tourist stakes is the elaborate and well preserved paintings of Buddha’s story that decorate the interior of each of the twenty eight caves. Construction began in the second century BC, finishing around six hundred years later, but were then lost to modern civilisation until troops from the East India Trading Company discovered them by chance in 1819. Years of excavation and preservation work later they have become a proud tourist attraction and an insight into the incredible workmanship that was exhibited pretty damn early as far as human history goes.

Each cave has amazing buddhist sculptures, the earliest sculptured in the second century BC.

Without going into too much detail, most people have a finite lunch break, the caves were exceptionally impressive and we’ve tried to capture a few of the finest examples on CCD in the gallery below. Another aspect of the day’s trip that was similarly fascinating was the reaction to us from Indian’s that we met as we explored. At times you feel like a celebrity; they want to take a photo with you, they just want a photo of you, they try to take your photo when you’re not even looking so they can show their friends. They shake your hand, ask where you are from, and they always have a friend from near there. One asked if he could swap watches with me (I declined), and some actually offer up themselves for you to take a photo of them; a rarity when travelling as most expect you to steal their soul or similar. They are fascinated by Lynette, for most of the local men I am just a conduit for a quick word with a white woman.

Lynette leaning in from the second storey of one of the impressive caves with her rather excellent new camera.

On the flipside, the expected begging and touting can be overbearing and the need to be firm goes beyond politeness. While walking in the peaceful hills overlooking a waterfall next to the caves we were accosted by a farmer desperate to sell us some not so fetching rocks. He followed us for nearly half a mile, despite being told everything short of a five knuckle wave, we gave him nothing. People justify things differently, our logic is that by giving to beggars you are encouraging the behaviour and will make things worse for both other tourists and themselves as they beg what they need with no motivation to raise themselves. By purchasing from local vendors, funding preservation through ticket prices, eating local produce and sharing what knowledge we have we are helping to build an economy that in most areas heavily depends on tourism. Whether that is the correct approach who knows. There are many constructive ways to help out developing economies, watch this space…

A peaceful picture of a local… actually on a mobile phone.

Ajanta caves done, we jumped back on a bus to take us to our next destination, Aurangabad. Following another Rough Guide recommendation, we stayed in Shree Maya hotel. Larger than Plaza Hotel, with its own restaurant, the service was immediately in a different league – ie a bit crap. Much more like we expected… In the Rough Guide the rooms are described as ‘cleanish’, we think the bathrooms are the ‘ish’ part. At least our policy of ‘zero squatting’ still holds a 100% success rate. The restaurant food was quite good, and the service unintentionally comedic. We were frequently outnumbered by paid staff three to one, and noticed the productivity level drop significantly whenever the assumed manager dropped for a bit of fussing. Overall, it wasn’t really that terrible, 445Rs for a double room with private bath. At least it had a cover sheet for the bed.

These cheeky chaps are so happy because they’ve just taken a photo of us sitting with them, we returned the favour.

Planning to spend a few more days here than in Jalgaon, our first day was a relatively peaceful wander around the town, popping into the weekly local market for a taste of indigenous bartering. Initially we were quite nervous, having to walk quite of town to get there and blatantly being the only white people they’d seen for a month or two. Walking nervously into the market, the few questioning stares soon vanished as people got back to the more important hard bartering. Livestock, spices, fruit, vegetables, bangles, sweets and some unidentifiable were all generally sold from the surface of a laid out blanket with a cheerful merchant smiling back at you from his half lotus. We didn’t buy much, we didn’t have a need for a two tonne bull, although some mini bananas served as munchies and we gave somebody 10Rs to fill a bag with local sweets for us to try (that was a nice idea that didn’t plan out as planned, they tasted a bit wrong and found the ants in our room suddenly got a bit friendly).

Conservation takes strange forms, including this pillar on a drip to make its cracks feel better.

We then headed to the local post office to send back the reasonably priced pink elephants we’d purchased in Ellora. Inaccuracy number two was that Ali had told us it would cost about 150Rs to send back; more like 1,100Rs for Speed Post. Plus, we found that one of the elephants had broken (Heidi we feel your pain!) in transit to the GPO. On the verge of tears, we took the box over the road to be parcelled up in a local shop; a fascinating process that culminates in him sewing a bespoke cloth pillow that snugly encloses its cardboard box contents before being darned shut and sealed with candle wax, 200Rs for the pleasure. Still we didn’t cry. We returned to the Post Office, found the cheaper Registered Post option for 730Rs and were then told this service had closed an hour ago. Still, we did not cry. Resigned to posting another day, we were immensely cheered when we found a shop on the way home that did a tasty mixed fruit milkshake with ice cream for 25Rs. We had several.

This was our friendly Tuk tuk driver Aman, who allowed us to see many more sites than we would have if it had been completely DIY!

At some point in the day I’d managed to make friends with a rickshaw driver called Aman, who managed to knock 100Rs off the hotel’s price for a bus to Goa. Later that evening, he took us around some of the local sights including a mini Taj Mahal for 150Rs. Surprisingly impressive, it was built by the Aurangzeb, the son of the man who built the Taj itself in Agra. Moving swiftly on, we visited a less interesting water mill and silk weaving factory before heading home and finishing off the day with a nice Thali, having arranged to meet Aman at 07:30 the next day to once again use his aggressive driving skills in seeing as much as possible at the Ellora caves before our bus to Goa at 4pm. He had of course at some point shown us a notebook with many hand written recommendations from fellow travellers, most of them three years old (the recommendations, not the travellers).

Looking back at The Victory Tower, a great example of persian architecture, built in 1435 by Ala-ud-din Bahmani to celebrate his conquest of the citadel.

An early rise and a farcical breakfast (after a half hour wait and no doubt many attempts the waiters confessed that the one man who could poach an egg was off that day, would fried be ok?) we jumped in our rickshaw and headed to Ellora caves. With one brief stop at Daulatabad, an awesome citadel crowning a massive conical volcanic outcrop, complete with Langur monkeys comfortably at home generally making mayhem among the visitors. The side stop was well worth it, with the immense Persian ‘Victory Tower’, a quick trip through bat inhabited labyrinthine tunnels by flaming torch light and watching monkeys steal food among the highlights. The citadel started its life as a 9th century fortress for the Hindu troops, but during its turbulent history it was occupied by the Muslims, Mughals and Marathas and seen as an vital stop in any regime’s conquest plan.

A smaller temple than Kailash, but helps to set the perspective when you appreciate this is all just one piece of carved rock.

Zooming along in our rickshaw to Ellora, we managed to squeeze in about ten or so of the magnificent caves before we ran out of time. We only managed that many because Aman was patiently waiting outside each few to speed us to the next batch. One of the most famous is the Hindu Kailash Temple, mined downwards and carved completely out of the one piece of rock to create a standing temple with incredibly ornate statues, columns, fascias and multi-storey temples that is unbelievable. Should somebody submit this to the Planning Office they would be more likely to find themselves committed – Kevin McCloud would be proud. As per the above, I won’t go into too much detail on the caves themselves, the above links on Wikipedia will save me the trouble and you death by text, but some of the pictures in the gallery below should set the scene.

Lakmanya Tilak train station, obviously a serfs’ second home.

Ellora done, we high tailed it back to the hostel, grabbed a shower (love 24hr check-out) and took our back packs to the bus station to nervously await our carriage. Expecting the worst, we were pleasantly surprised when a large coach pulled up with all of its wheels still intact and without a month’s farming produce piled on top. The journey itself was however soberin; in South America they have respect for the fact it is night time and you probably have no wish to spend every second of the trip wide awake. In India, there aren’t many traffic lights or rules of the road, they see beeping the horn as an acceptable alternative. They beep to tell somebody to hurry up, to slow down, when they turn a corner to warn any overtakers, when they overtake to warn everybody, and when there’s nothing else for miles because they prefer the tune it makes to the sound of the engine. In short, they beep all the time, all day, all night, and we didn’t sleep much. Plus the aggressiveness of their driving is directly proportional to the length of their manhood, so every time they need to brake you find yourself slumped in a heap in the footwell with your underpants wedged between your buttocks. We recommend the train wherever possible when travelling in India – make sure you book ahead!

So we arrived in Madgaon (Margao), Goa, at about 8am in the morning, feeling a little caved out, very tired, and looking forward to a bit of beach time. Which is why we were so pleased to find blazing sun shine and bottles of beer for about 35Rs (45p). The next blog post will be a little shorter…

The Amazing Ajanta and Enchanting Ellora caves in India! Our trip to the amazing caves representing Buddhist and Hindu worship in South India.
Mumbai airport! A bit aggressive for the first few minutes, but not bad looking.	Lakmanya Tilak train station, obviously a serfs’ second home.	Lynette making herself comfortable on our first Indian train, sleeper class.	An early start allows us to enjoy the tranquility of Ajanta caves uninterrupted for at least twenty minutes!	Each cave has amazing buddhist sculptures, the earliest sculptured in the second century BC.
The detail and longevity of the carvings is astounding.	The caves vary in size from the size of a large shed to twelve squash courts all nestled together.	Conservation work is a constant and meticulous process, not without its errors such as a varnish coating once used that was meant to protect but further degraded the walls causing irreparable damage.	$Buddhism was the dominant religion back in 200BC, but now only a tiny fraction of Indians consider themselves Buddhists. They have one more now.$ Buddhism was the dominant religion back in 200BC, but now only a tiny fraction of Indians consider themselves Buddhists. They have one more now.	The sheer scale of the carvings is immense and incredibly preserved.
More strange and wonderful depictions of various characters in Buddha’s history.	Virtually all of the caves are dominated by a large Buddha sitting calmly in a small room directly opposite each cave entrance.	Ajanta is most famous not for its carvings, but the amazingly detailed paintings that have lasted over two hundred years.	The rather impressive carved entrance to one of the caves.	You have to take your shoes off to enter each cave; some of them have a distinct whiff of cheesy feet…
Conservation takes strange forms, including this pillar on a drip to make its cracks feel better.	Apparently Wacker Oil is the what’s needed for this patient…	This is an unfinished cave, which helps to illustrate the excavation process used two thousand years ago.	The ‘Temptation of Mara’ where Buddha is depicted being seduced (unsuccessfully) by seven tantalizing sisters while their father, the satanic Mara, watches from astride an elephant in the top left corner.	No tourist trinkets for sale here – spices, fish, food and livestock are the name of the game.
Some of the bulls are scarily gigantic.	A phenomenal and rather pretty amount of bracelets for sale.	These cheeky chaps are so happy because they’ve just taken a photo of us sitting with them, we returned the favour.	During Diwali, female members of the family draw a ‘Kolam’ outside their home using rice powder.	The gardens looked a great place to relax for the day, unfortunately it was a rush visit for us!
We were then taken to some of the oldest silk weaving machines in the world, imported from Yorkshire and still used (as a tourist trap) in Aurangabad.	The moat was filled with poisenous snakes and man eating crocodiles in its prime…	It is also home to hundreds of bats, as seems to be the case with any dark space in India!	One of the large squares at the fort, we emptied it by telling everyone that a bus of white people had just arrived at the car park.	That small thing at one end is not a plug, it is me at one side of this Super Turbo Olympic sized swimming pool.
The walls that surround the temple itself are impressive in their own right, and still carved directly from the cliff’s rock.	The work took over one hundred years to complete, and is exceptionally cool.	Every surface displays ornate reliefs depicting beautiful episodes of Hindu history.	Here they are, en masse – a teacher would normally then break them up but occasionally we find they are the first to join in.	Inside the centre of Kailash temple itself, the quality of workmanship is staggering.
Outside looking into another room in the temple, shoes off around here.	Underneath the second room pictured before is this beautiful relief of Shiva.	Difficult to get the sense of size and scope here, but you are looking at the top of the temple in the middle as it drops down into its carved out home.	Moving on to one of the Buddhist temples at Ellora, this is Buddha himself.	Somebody copping a quick feel…
Inside one of the Jain temples, with a large Lotus flower spreading proudly from the ceiling.	A smaller temple than Kailash, but helps to set the perspective when you appreciate this is all just one piece of carved rock.	This was our friendly Tuk tuk driver Aman, who allowed us to see many more sites than we would have if it had been completely DIY!	Its true; the locals are fascinated by foreigners and rush to take photos with you at every opportunity… its like being a film star!	Lynette leaning in from the second storey of one of the impressive caves with her rather excellent new camera.
More examples of the detailed and long lasting paint work that has intrigued historians.	A model of the caves, which were only rediscovered about two hundred years ago by East India Trading Company Troops.	Lynette standing next to one of the Buddhist monuments.	The founder of Buddhism, Siddhartha Gautama, believed that our egos are the biggst obstacle on the road to enlightenment.	When Buddha was finally laid to rest, all the angels cried for him.
Carved from the vertical walls of a horseshoe shaped ravine, the scene is beautiful.	Next stop, the local market in Aurangabad!	The Bibi-ka-Maqbara, or mini Taj Mahal, was completed in 1678 and dedicated by Prince Azam Shah to the memory of his mother Auranzeb’s wife.	Significantly smaller but impressive in its own right, we had no idea this beautiful building was in Aurangabad until Aman took us there.	Using this process, each article takes weeks to months to complete, but looks beautiful.
Looking back through the third line of defence, Kalakot or ‘Fort of the Death’. Charming.	The forbidding entrance to the ‘dark passage’, where a labyrinthine tunnel weaves up to the top of the citadel with traps and false exits for unintended visitors.	Looking back at The Victory Tower, a great example of persian architecture, built in 1435 by Ala-ud-din Bahmani to celebrate his conquest of the citadel.	The impressive Kila Shikan (‘Fort Breaker’) cannon, inscribed with its name in Persian.	Particularly beautiful, and very dangerous. So is the cannon.
At one end of the square stands the temple, and a bell for praying.	We’ve cottoned on to them wanting to take photos by ensuring we snap some of their beautiful saris ourselves.	The imposing entrance and the first of many lines of defence before the actual citadel itself.	13km northwest of Aurangabad, the citadel of Daulatabad dominates the horizon.	One of the many schools that were visiting that day, just before they spotted us.
On the left is the side of the temple, on the right the columns carved into the cliff itself, all out of a single shelf of solid rock.	Now entering Ellora caves, this is the entrance to Kailash temple.	Lynette outside another Buddhist temple, again carved into the cliff face.	It appears that most sculptors had Miss Price on their mind when designing their deity.	Another family who wanted a group photo with us involved, the situation completely spun on its head from other countries we have visited.
We think this is a chipmunk, oddly they sound like a bird when they call to each other (for about half an hour!)	The exquisite and perceptive artwork is beautiful to behold, any restorative work has been very successful (as in hard to spot!).	A peaceful picture of a local… actually on a mobile phone.