Ellora Caves & around Aurangabad June 4, 2011

The tour to Ellora caves and around Aurangabad was really rushed. I wish they had split it into two tours. There are 34 caves in Ellora and we only went to the three major ones: 2 Buddhists and 1 Hindu. We also covered a fort in Aurangabad which has some magnificent views but the most memorable part of exploring that fort was walking completely in the dark, in a passage that were full of bats and their smelly guano. However, the view was well worth it once we got up to the top. The fort was built and defended by the Muslims and the numerous false passages as our guide explained lead to a 30 feet drop down a moat that was full of crocodiles and snakes (there were no crocodiles, but plenty of snakes).

The guide said that the moat is about 1 meter deep.

Our party was a party of twelve with two Americans from the East Coast. Carlin has been living in India for a year and will continue to live in Mumbai for the next two years with her partner, Michael. She works for some kind of non-profit agency that works with the street kids in Mumbai and she gave me her contact info...I think it would be very interesting to see what she does.

 Another pair that I talked to, Sidharth and Sridevi also have an interesting story to tell me. They recently converted to Buddhism from Hinduism because they were from a low-caste. They had a Buddhist marriage in their village in Bangalore in which caste cease to exist. The wife is a medical administrator and the husband works as an electrical engineer. Sidharth for some reason doesnʼt smile a whole lot in pictures--he always has this grin on his face...however, he seems to be a nice guy though. I just hope that I didnʼt offend the two of them b/c I covered their lunch tab. They didnʼt seem very happy when I did that...maybe next time I should really let anyone who want to pay for my lunch do it, even though I did cover Pratap and Shilpa yesterday and while they were reluctant at first, they were fine afterwards. Maybe class is something of an issue that I am not really unaware of.

 The Ellora caves is a lot bigger than the Ajanta ones and I found out today from my guide that the first 13 caves were Buddhist...they were commissioned by the Emperor Asoka at the beginning of the 2nd century BC. Buddhism ruled India for 800 years until the resurgence of the Hindu and the decline of Buddhism in India after the 7th century AD. The Kailash temple was built completely out of mountain rock and it was quite spectacular...I didnʼt get to explore it much b/c by the time we got there...fatigue was really an issue--it was already 1:30 and the humidity didnʼt help either. . Besides, Sidharth and Sridevi, being a convert Buddhist, didnʼt want to have anything to do with Hinduism. So the three of us actually sat in the shade watching people passing by. We actually sat very close to a bunch of monkeys...they were like a feet away from me. At first I wanted to take a picture to show you guys how close we were to the monkeys but Sridevi told me that one should never disturb the monkeys otherwise they will bite...one shouldnʼt even pat them on the back or even touch them...letting them be is the best thing to do. Taking a picture was out of the question because they could snatch the camera and run away with it since they have never seen cameras before and are curious as to what it does.

 I told them that the only time we get to see monkeys is in zoos...not out in the caves and such. India is this crazy and unique country where there are quite a number of wildlife living alongside people. There were many beautiful birds..and what struck me was that they werenʼt afraid in terms of the proximity of people. I saw a small little bird on the way to Ajanta sipping water from a pipe that was dropping a little bit of water every few minutes.

The Ellora caves have many buddhist statues that are not well-preserved...hopefully someday the glory of the caves will be restored back to its former beauty...even if it means tampering with the past. And yes, I did see the room chamber...instead of being a double bed like the ones in Ajanta, this
time it is single with a pillow made completely out of rock...OUCH. Also the tour guide told us that these caves are not permanent residence...they are merely just to have monks stay for a few nights in each room before they move on to another monastery I guess.

Many of the pictures for some reason came out terribly...they were really bleary and bleed all over--I think it has something to do with the dilapidated conditions of the statues themselves.

It didnʼt feel much like a tour today given the fact that we tried to cover so many grounds in one day. What I did a lot of was taking my time talking to people in my group and people watching.