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Tuesday 21st October - day 60
Mumbai
So yesterday was mainly spent bumming around a shopping centre and eating cake before we took our night bus to Aurangabad to visit the ellora caves. After lots of umming and arring about if its worth the two on the trott 9 hour buses we decide to go.
We arrive pretty early, take a rik to the main bus station with two french we met on the bus, and get a local bus easy peasy to the ellora entrance.. only to find its closed on tuesdays. Unf***ingbelievable.
There are some other caves a 3 hour bus ride away so we jump on another rik to a nearby village with an indian guy who is also headed the same place. In the village we take another rik to another village and from there another local bus. Even though this sounds complicated, it saves doubiling back to Aurangabad and taking a 3/4 hour journey from there. The second rik is eventful to say the least, jumping on we agree to just 50 rupees for a 40k journey..no doubt due to the indian guy getting us indian prices. However.. its about 40 mins before the rik is full..and when I say full, im talking spilling out with people - at least 10 in the 4 seater contraption. Theres 4 lads in the drivers seat alone. It blasts ghetto hindi music and the indian guy next to me decides to stroke my leg the entire way. Great. We pass through small villages and agricultural areas with cows with brightly painted horns roaming along the roads and women carrying massive loads of water and packages on their heads.
When we arrive at ajanta we have a few hours of exploring before we need to leave to take the bus back to mumbai.
The caves were discovered in AD 1819 and were built up in the earlier 2nd century BC-AD. Most of the paintings in Ajanta are right from 2nd century BC-AD and some of them about the fifth century AD and continued for the next two centuries. All paintings shows heavy religious influence and centre around Buddha, Bodhisattvas, incidents from the life of Buddha and the Jatakas. The paintings and sculpures are considered "the finest surviving examples of Indian art".
The caves are cut into the side of a cliff that is on the south side of a U-shaped gorge on the small river Waghur.
Apparently the monks woukd retire to the caves for protection from the monsoon rains.
Theres about 30 caves in total, and are all in pitch black to preserve the paintings. Each cave generally consists of a pillared room with small caves cut out in the sides and a buddha shrine at the far end. The paintings are viewed best by torch light as they are pretty faded.
The caves are a little dissapointing as they are very samey, and I think as we saw the amazing longmen caves in china, our expectations were probably too high. Although the caves overall are great, they are prehaps best viewed in monsoon when the waterfalls pour over the rock..and not on the back of a 10 hour bus ride.
After some horrible lunch there, which fortunately a fly nose dives into, so we get it for free, we taxi share with an indian family back to aurangabad. Some all you can eat thali later (which is amazing) we take the bus back to mumbai.
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