More Caves at Ajanta

30.09.11

Another early start and 11 hours of travelling, but all worth it!

We got up and had breakfast and checked out of our hotel (they only charged us for 1 night-bonus, which helped us to overlook how dirty and incompetent they had been generally!) and they agreed to lock our bags up for the day.

Then walked down to the bus station to get on a local semi-delux bus to Ajanta. I was

aprehensive about this bus especially when we saw it, not looking very road worthy! But the good news was that we got on the bus first and managed to get a window seat and also had a seat each-bonus!

The journey was fascinating, everything looked so green after the monsoon season and we passed through lots of small towns, seeing tiny barber shops, butchers with chickens in cages, fruit stands with the vendor only fruit or veg.

When we got of the bus, we got led through all the shops by the entrance before we could get on a shuttle bus that would take us the 4km to the caves. On arrival we climbed up a steep hill before we had our first view of the caves, which was stunning. We tried to imagine being the first of the East India Company troops in 1819, guided by a scout from the

local tribe, to see this view. The caves are in the walls of a horse-shoe ravine carved by a the Wagora river, which is lush and green after the monsoons. The caves date back to the 2nd century BC and at their peak were the home of 200 Buddhist monks, which is hard to imagine.

The caves walls are adorned with stunning paintings which still remain to varying extents trhoughout the 28 caves. So along with statues and elaborate carved pillars, the ceilings were painted with repetitive tile-like patterns and murals, in reds,oranges and blues.

There is a curse supposedly attached to the caves because several early attempts to document the paintings at the caves have been doomed, with collections of reproductions, that have taken 27 years to copy, destroyed and attempts to preserve the paintings with varnish in 1920 causing more damage.

We spent a happy few hours admiring the 2000+ year old paintings and then began our journey back to Aurangabad (2.5hrs). We returned to the hotel to pick up our bags (and this pretty much sums up the hotel) and we trotted down to the room to pick them up where there was much confusion, with 2 or 3 people running up and down the stairs apparently to find the key

to the room, with no avail. A few minutes later, an eager chappy turns up grinning with a pairs of pliers. We thought okay, sensible he's going to try to cut the padlock. Oh no, he proceeds to whack the padlock with the pliers instead. Martin and I are looking at each other in disbelief, trying to stifle laughs. After a few minutes the matey starts giggling to himself as he realises this is probably no the most successful course of action! Luckily at this point the key is found!

We headed to the bus station to find lunch nearby. We rushed in to a small cafe and said we had a bus in a half hour would it be possible to grab soome lunch in that time? yes, yes of course sir, we 'll hurry. An hour later, with not apology or acknowledgement our lunch appeared!!

Then on to Pune (5 hours)..........