Monsoon Meandering

Ellora Caves

The caves near Aurangabad (Ajanta and Ellora) have been on the top of Jane’s ToDo list for some time. She could almost have crossed Ellora off the list 22 years ago when she visited Ellora whilst touring India with a friend. But in Aurangabad last time her friend fractured her collar bone and couldn’t visit the caves. So Jane went alone, taking a autorickshaw to Ellora by herself. Her stay didn’t last long as it was pouring with rain and whilst visiting the caves accompanied by her rickshaw driver she remembered the film A Passage To India and promptly left.

Ellora is promoted quite differently to Ajanta and there isn’t the air of commercialism there, which is quite refreshing as Ajanta was far too structured with permanent shops there. The caves are spread of a few kilometres so inside the grounds there are autorickshaws offering lifts from one end to the other, for a fee of course. Luckily we’d employed a driver for our three day stay in Aurangabad so he ferried us around.

Cave number 10 impressed us with its huge catherdral-like ceiling:

Here’s some of the other images from the caves, some which are really long exposures due to the darkness inside

I found that the other caves weren’t half as impressive or awe-inspiring as Ajanta but that’s until you come to the masterpiece, the Kailash Temple. A large temple whose walls have been cut away from the rock that surrounded it in a project that lasted 100 years. Standing there looking at the temple and thinking about the design, planning and workmanship that went into it you can’t help but stand there with your jaw on the ground. Here’s some photos of Kailash Temple:

Here’s a few nice portraits we took at Ellora:

Finally at the end of a hard, tiring day, I decided it was time for a rest in the grounds of Hotel Kailash where we had a meal before catching our overnight train to Hyderabad: