Week 8, Trip to Aurangabad

Last weekend, Jenny, Susan and I went on a trip to Aurangabad. We left on Friday (28 Aug) afternoon, and the bus took about 5 hours to get there. We stayed at the Hotel Shree Maya, which was ok; there were quite a few bugs crawling around the place. My mom asked me if it was a Maharashtrian hotel or a Western hotel, and it was somewhere in between. This is exemplified by the toilet in our room, which was a little bit Western (left) and a little bit Indian (right):

On Saturday we went to Ajanta caves. These were another 3 hour bus ride from Aurangabad, but it was well worth the journey. There are about 30 Buddhist caves carved into the walls of a gorge. You can see them in the background here:

Each of the caves contains amazing carvings and paintings all around the walls and columns and the ceiling. It’s hard to describe how detailed and elaborate it all is. My favorite part was the large Buddha that is looking right at you from the very back of the cave when you walk in. Every cave I walked into left me in awe, and I wanted to take a million photos. The photos don’t show what it’s really like there.

Cave 2	Cave 19

Cave 26
After the caves we walked back through a row of shops to the bus. This experience ruined the day a little. The shop keepers were following us around yelling “Yes Madam”, “What do you want?”, “Come look in my shop”, “Looking is free”. At one point the three of us had a crowd of over 10 shop keepers following us and trying to get us to buy souvenirs from their shop. I understand that they are just trying to make a living, but I felt so crowded that I couldn’t look at the contents of the shops properly, and so annoyed that I didn’t want to give them any money! It really makes me miss the significantly less aggressive shop workers in the west.

On Sunday we hired a rickshaw driver, Nasir, for the day. First he helped us get bus tickets back to Pune for that evening, and got us each a 20 rupee discount. Then he took us to Ellora Caves, which are only about an hour from Aurangabad. We made a quick photo stop at Daulatabad Fort, which we didn’t have time to visit. I thought that overall these caves were not as impressive as Ajanta. The caves at Ellora are split into three groups: Jain, Buddhist and Hindu. The Jain caves had some beautiful carvings. Here, Susan and I are on one of the balconies:

The Buddhist caves were similar to, but not as nice as, the caves at Ajanta. The Hindu caves were a bit plain, except for cave 16, which is HUGE! It’s not even really a cave – it’s a full sized temple carved into the side of a mountain. When you go through some of the other caves you start to forget that they were all carved out of a solid piece of rock, but in this one you feel like you are in the bottom of a quarry that has been turned into a temple. Here you can see the rock cliff around the left side of the photo, and the multi-story temple in the middle:


We took the bus home again on Sunday night, and were exhausted from all the traveling and walking we had done over the weekend. We had a great time.

More photos are coming on facebook for those who are interested.