Siddhartha Hotel Jalgaon

... this huge whip with his mate beating a giant drum. It was a sight to behold. I was able to slip past but Lach was not so lucky. He didn't want to be on the receiving end of the whip but the guy wouldn't let him past and resorted to chanting curses while waving a handful of peacock feathers in Lach's face. Finally Lach had to dart into crazy Mumbai traffice to get free. Only time would tell whether Lach ...

... from the East India Company who came upon them from the jungle and viewed them across the gorge. There are 28 caves here and some more elaborate than others. The intricacies of the paintings are stunning as well as the carved Buddhas and interiors of the temples inside. By 1pm we had finished in the caves and walked along the river back to catch the bus to the touristy complex where we were “found” by the men and each had a look ...

... Then, he asked for the RC book and insurance papers, I had both. Showed it.

Gotcha!

He said "yeh kya hai?? Aao sahib se baat karo" .

The insurance was over way back in January. We told him that we’ve got the insurance but forgot to keep it with us; we’ll get it faxed as soon as possible. After some pesky arguments and an astonishing self-introductory note from Gaurav—some Procter & Gamble stuff—he let us go for a price of ...

... that morning. It costs 10 rupees for an Indian but 250 rupees for foreigners, and we didnt have enough on us. Of course there was no hope of an ATM. A generous bearded dude put us through as 1 Indian and 1 non-Indian, take your pick which one is which! Ajanta caves are caves which were converted into Buddhist temples, and mark the period when Buddhism held sway as the main religion in India. The caves were indeed beautiful, but ...

... Jalgaon is a funny little town. When we checked-in to the hotel the manager said to us "there wil probably be a power-cut at midday for three hours and then again from 6 until 9. Tomorrow the power will probably go off at 6am for three hours and then from 3 until 6 in the afternoon." - this happens everyday at various times! Apparently the power company has trouble generating electricity fr 24 hours a day. The hotel was well-prepared though and handed out candles to all the guests.

We covered some serious mileage today. We left Mumbai last night on an overnight train to Jalgeon. Luckily, the train was several hours late, so we didn't arrive until about 7:00am, far better than our scheduled arrival of 4:30am. From there we had breakfast and took a bus to the Ajanta caves, about an hour and a half away. The Ajanta caves are a series of 27 ...

... centuries ago. They were truly spectacular! We managed to meet a group of 3 girls who have spent a few months in India working as NGO's and hung out with them for the day. We decided to split a bit earlier as we had to catch our bus back to Jalgaon so rushed through the last bit. Fortunately the girls were planning on heading to Ajanta caves the next day and so we meet them again. Our jeep ride back down to Aurangabad was extremely ...

... void. Hundreds of years later, Ajanta would reach its peak, after artisans had finished their masterpieces. The artisans carefully painted on dry outlines of cinnabar using water-based pigments of kaolin chalk, lamp soot, glauconite, ochre, and lapis lazuli. The glauconite underpaintings of terre verte created a base for human figures, which slowly took shape as light reflected into the cave. On the ceiling, other artisans drew mandalas and floral ...

... carved into the cliff face of a river gorge between 200BC -650AD. This place used to be on the Silk Route and the monks were apparently loaded as they received money from the stream of merchants that used to come through the place. This allowed them to employ the best artisans from all over India to carve out and decorate the cave temples ...

... bikes to explore some of the temples that were scattered around the outskirts of the little village. When you're used to being escorted everywhere by rickshaws etc, the sense of freedom and control you have on a bike is quite liberating - we felt quite gleeful as we out-pedalled naughty school-skipping kids who chased us for rupees and persistent trinket sellers. Next morning we visited the very impressive main temple complex, set in ...