Ajanta and Ellora caves

 At Ajanta Caves

Ellora Caves with waterfall in the background

Over the weekend of August 12th, Jon and I traveled to Aurangabad, Maharashtra with Srikanth Kondaveti, Abe Dorr, Ravi Chandra, Rajanikanta Sahoo and Mehar Chaitanya to see the Ajanta and Ellora Caves. These guys were great company and gentlemen. I felt as though I was with brothers all weekend. They went out of their way to look after us and it was nice having "fixers" as Jon would say. If a hawker was too persistent, one of our Indian friends was usually able to dissuade them.

The Ajanta caves date from 200 B.C.E.  to 650 C.E. and are a World heritage site. There are 5 temples and 25 monasteries cut into the rock gorge. Use of the caves ended with the decline of Buddhism in India and they were lost until British hunters discovered them in the 19th century. The caves are in a beautiful setting which I tried to capture in the pictures above. This was probably the greenest and cleanest area of India that we have experienced so far.

In the early caves the Buddha was not represented as a man but as a symbol as a stupa as shown above. It is a rather large and uninteresting blob like structure.

The Ajanta caves are most famous for the paintings which are well preserved. Non-polluting buses take visitors to the cave site in order to preserve them. The paintings tell stories of Buddha. It is clear that these paintings must have been very bright and beautiful when new. I could understand how monks would feel like worshiping in a place like this.

My favorite part of the caves was the depictions of Buddha. In the last cave there was a giant sleeping Buddha which was really cool, as well as the sculpture above. This was a great place to visit and it is probably one of my favorite places in India now.

On Sunday we went to see the Ellora Caves with 34 caves dedicated to the Jain, Buddhist and Hindu religions. Although this is also a World Heritage site, the caves at Ajanta were better cared for since there was less trash and destruction. The view in some areas was nice with a waterfall, but not as spectacular as Ajanta. The cave above is a Hindu Temple which took 200 years to complete.

The most impressive thing about these caves was the sculptures. The sculptures were numerous and detailed. In the 3rd photo Jon is standing next to Siddhaika, the Goddess of generosity seated on a lion and under a mango tree. In the 4th photo he is next to Shiva-Parvati with Ravana trying to lift Mount Kailash.

We also went to the Daulatabad Fort. It was impressive, but I have seen enough forts so that I did not take as many pictures here. I did, however, get good shots of monkeys and even some bats.

We ended the day by going to see the Taj Mahal replica known as Bibi-Ka-Maqbara. Having seen the real thing, this was not impressive but interesting. I did not take a picture of it, I guess I was that unimpressed, or out of batteries.