Series
We were to leave Mumbai by bus at 10PM and travel overnight to Aurangabad from where we'd explore the cave temples of Ellora and Ajanta. The bus does a pickup stop in Sion Square, and standing for an hour on the side of the road we were starting to wonder whether we were in the right place, whether the bus would ever show up, or if we got scammed by the travel agent. But in due time the bus pulled up and we jumped in. It turns out that you have to be pretty quick at this: if you blink the bus is gone and the ticket is non-refundable... The bus itself was not air conditioned, which is a bit of a drag in this climate. I had a hard time trying to fit in a seat built for people 2/3 my size, when the guy in front of me leaned back his chair until his head was almost on my lap! Not ideal, even after I had pulled my chair back... Finally, to top it all they started showing a Bollywood movie on the bus: it was a bad story with ghosts and terrible special effects, the volume was cranked to the max and the movie lasted 3 hours. Impossible to sleep, even after the movie finally ended.
We arrived in Aurangabad at 7AM, and made to the hotel we had picked out; just in time to make the tour bus to the caves of Ajanta. If we had tried to make such efficient timing we couldn't have... During the ride to the caves, we met two Belgians from Bruges: Vincent and Frank; and we exchanged some travel stories.
The caves of Ajanta are really a series of 30 Buddhist temples carved in the
rock face of a horseshoe-shaped valley. They were dug between 200BC and 650AD,
but as Buddhism waned in India during the 7th Century AD (due to a revival of
Hinduism under the Chalukya and Rashtrakuta dynasties) they were
forgotten and finally lost; until a British hunting party led by a man with the
original name of John Smith stumbled upon them in 1819. The caves are beautiful
and adorned with paintings that remain clearly visible to this day, most certainly
because they have not been visited by people during such a long interval.
At the end of the day, upon returning to town, everyone scattered to their homes or hotels (the tourists were mostly Indian rather than foreigners). Narayan and I, after arranging the train reservation that would bring us back to Mumbai, headed to the local Tandoor restaurant and ran into the other Belgian crew. One thing leading to another, and one beer to the next, we had a great time...
The next morning, we were supposed to meet with Vincent and Frank at 8h30AM to go visit the caves at Ellora; but hangover probably helping they never showed... Ellora has 34 caves, much like in Ajanta; however the caves are Buddhist, Hindu and Jain (whereas Ajanta is only Buddhist). When we got there, I was awestruck by the temple of the Gods: Kailasa (also know as Cave 16). The whole temple is carved out of the rock, the largest monolithic structure in the world. Construction started in AD760 and 200,000 tons of rock were removed over a period of 150 years. This was not slave workers like in Egypt, but paid employees of the King Krishna I of the Rashtrakuta dynasty. The temple represents Mt. Kailasa, the sacred adobe of Lord Shiva and is adorned by wonderful sculptures. Unfortunately many of the sculptures were defaced in the following centuries, the caves not having been lost to history due to their closeness to the town of Aurangabad.
The remaining caves at Ellora were all very impressive: we explored them, comparing the ascetic sculptures of the Jain temples with the sensual, luscious and surprisingly erotic sculptures of Hindu temples. Clearly the culture at the time was more tolerant than it is today in this respect. Some of the temples were hard to reach: we had to follow a tiny path suspended above a huge crater in order to reach cave 29, while high above our heads up the cliff a couple of parakeets were trying to attack a bee hive, causing a great amount of commotion among the bees.
I learned that there is a series of caves, exactly 32Km apart from each other (about a day's walk for pilgrims): starting with Elephanta and making its way slowly to Ellora and Ajanta, and then continuing on... I couldn't get the guide to tell what the final destination or the purpose of the pilgrimage was, but its interesting to note that some temples are Buddhist, while some others are Hindu or Jain and this seems to be perfectly natural.
An interesting aspect of India culture is that it is easy to tell women's religion by their dress: Hindus wear the Sari, Muslim the Chador and Christians wear skirts or dresses.
I am slowly learning about Hinduism: Narayan is a great help, and we are also buying some comics books from the Amar Chithra Cathar series originally destined for kids, but which explain in a very entertaining way the stories associated with the main characters of the Hindu pantheon (which, by the way, is populated by about 330 million gods). The religion is very entertaining for all the gods and stories, but also it is the most tolerant and open-minded religion I ever came across. It does have a sort of cartoony feeling for my western eyes, but that only makes it more endearing. I am particularly fond of Ganesh, a plumb boy with an elephant head and four arms, god of good fortune, new beginnings, prosperity and success.
India and the Kingdom of Nepal (gallery) (next entry =>) Maharashtra India Places Friends Travel Religion