We took the train from Mumbai to Aurangabad and were pleasantly surprised by the comfort of the carriage in “Second Seating” class. Enough leg room, fans, windows. It was great, despite the nightmare tales we’d heard and read. Snacks and water were also available non-stop by train roaming salesman. Sorted.
Our six hour trip flew by,helped by a long conversation with Deepak who assured us our ultimate destinations of Ajanta and Ellora were both fascinating.
Basically, nobody guest Aurangabad for the sake of Aurangabad. Don’t get us wrong; Aurangabad isn’t unpleasant but it is uninteresting. We checked into our hotel and slept off the train journey, eager for morning to come so we could begin our adventures in the Indian countryside in search our caves.
We’d decided to go to the Ajanta Caves first. They are 2 and a half hours from Aurangabad by rickety old bus and by the time we arrived our arses definitely knew about it. As we approached the fairly inconspicuous bus stop a number of locals helpfully turned around to cry “Ajanta!” in unison. One advantage of taking local busses, other than price, is there’s usually only one place foreigners who take these routes are going, and by and large locals help you out.
We took a second shuttle bus up to the caves. They are amazing. As we entered the first few temples, I struggled to imagine how it was even possible centuries ago to have carved there massive, intricately decorated rooms out of the cliff. Man’s desire to overcome fear and boredom in the distant past continues to pay dividends in the present day.
(Some of the caves were never completed and this gives an inside into how they were carved out from the rock)
However, there are quite a lot of cave temples at Ajanta. More than 20. I must admit in the heat of the day, with our bums nervously anticipating another 2 and a half hours in the company of rickety old bus, our enthusiasm for the caves ebbed away gradually. After a few hours of exploring each cave, climbing up and down steps, gasping and gazing, we were ready to go. On the bus home, we hit a bump at speed and Ruth nearly flew out the window. We slept well that night.
The following day we were up and out very early. We had to get to Ellora and back before our sleeper bus to Udaipur. Mercifully, rickety old bus tie to Ellora was only about 45 minutes. we bounded off just up the road from the caves and grabbed a delicious breakfast.
Ellora’s main cave temple, Kailasa Temple is absolutely awesome in the literal sense. It’s not actually a cave, rather it’s been carved directly out of a sheer cliff face and it’s huge. It’s an even more unimaginable feat than the Ajanta complex. The further one goes into the temple, the higher the interior walls become until it’s really ludicrous to imagine how deep they builders had to dig down into the cliff. We spent a good hour exploring the corridors, staircases and statues within the temple itself.
We continued exploring each of the individual temples at Ellora, and though none could match the first for size and complexity, they were all extremely impressive. I must admit, I preferred Ellora to Ajanta. The scale and variation of the temples is far more impressive, and the proximity to Aurangabad helps too. When we’d seen all the caves, we hopped into a 4×4 taxi to get back (after the first four rickety old busses that passed declined to stop and pick us up despite much waving and walking into the road). Back in town, we grabbed our bags from the hotel, some lunch too boot and said our goodbyes to this funny little town.
