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Ajanta Caves

Using Aurangabad as our base camp once again, we took another day trip, this time to Ajanta...

The caves at Ajanta are all in the side of a big, horse-shoe-shaped area of hill. Some of them apparently date back as far as the second century B.C - they are primarily Buddhist caves, and are famous for featuring fantastic paintings and artwork on the walls inside. The site is thought to have been forgotten/unknown to humans for hundreds of years, until some British soldiers stumbled across it by chance in 1819. It's now a World Heritage Site, attracting many visitors each week...

There are 29 caves in total. If you wanted to explore each one in close detail, it would probably take two or three days. Our tour group had a different guide today - one that was not quite as funny as the guy from the day before, but not far off. A maximum of 40 people are allowed in each cave at any one time, and flash photography is banned inside them... There was just over 40 people in our group, so he had to exhance a few angry words with the guards to let us all in (otherwise there would always be a few people missing his explanations). They gave up arguing, and in we went...only for loads of Indians to 'accidentally' let their flashes go off, again and again...causing the guards to keep coming in after us shouting their heads off... Cue looks of exasperation and embarassment from the guide!

The guide took us to the most impressive caves, making sure we saw all the best stuff. It was a pretty long walk all-in-all, and we were knackered/parched by the end of it. You have to walk up about one hundred steps just to get into the site...that is, unless you decide to splash out on four blokes to carry you up in your own chair. The name of these chairs escape me, but we fondly refer to them as Lazyboys, after the awesome sofa-chairs they have in America. Only the most bourgeois of Indians hire these babies, and you damn well better get out of their way if they're trying to pass you on a set of steep steps! We saw these four guys sweating profusely as they carried this woman up a flight of stairs, only to find their way blocked by an intrepid tourist/photographer who was taking a few snaps...i thought they were going to fall back down the stairs under the weight!

Some of the cave paintings were pretty fantastic although quite worn (not surprising bearing in mind how old they are). With it being so dark in the caves it's difficult to get decent pictures - it's hard enough to see them in the first place without a torch...fortunately our guide had one. I've also noticed that Indian-style photography generally involves taking pictures of your family with fantastic backgrounds...and the odd random person walking into the shot at the last second. With around one billion people in the country, it's very difficult indeed to take a photograph of a famous site without other people getting in the way. Indians don't even seem to bother trying, they just take it as read that other people will be in the picture. I guess they're used to it...

Both Ellora and Ajanta are well worth seeing, particularly if you have an interest in historical sites, but also to find out more about the histories of the various religions that are common in India. With Aurangabad being the only realistic place to stay nearby, it's difficult to spend as much time in Ellora/Ajanta as you'd like without taking several day trips, but they're interesting places, even if you have to Ajay them :O)

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