Caves and Things
Trip Start
Aug 23, 1996
1
245
451
Trip End
Ongoing
Aurangabad,
India
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Once we had done all the usual shit, like a room and some food, we grabbed a prickshaw to take us to the place we wanted to be at
Bibi Ka Maqbara
What is so special about this place you ask, well, it is a copy of the Taj. Except that only about the first two metres are made of marble and the rest is brick and plaster. It was also very squashed in with not much room for the mosque on the side. The minarets were also way out of proportion. They looked more like lighthouses !!! Still, it was very impressive. Especially, when you only pay $US2.00. Considering that there were only seven tourists including ourselves, we were pretty much alone. We both rated this really highly.
We jumped out of our Prickshaw at the bus station, jumped on a local bus and was at site number two
Daulatabad
Being the only tourists on the bus, we knew that this could be similar to Bibi. No tourists. The entrance fee was the same, and in through the huge doors we went. The first thing that you saw was a minaret which had been painted shit brown. There used to be tiles on it, similar to Iran's, but the local builders had painted over the top of them !!! Into Jame Masjid. The columns had been stolen from a Hindu temple. After the fort had stopped being used, the Mosque's mirab now had a Hindu god there. It had come full circle !!! We started to climb up stairs. After a little while, we were confronted with a tunnel. As to be expected, a man came running over with a flame for a torch. A couple of Indians refused to pay the guide, so he hassled us out instead. We pulled out our torch, and the guide was not happy. The two Indians came over and asked if they could use our torch !!! I quoted 200 Rupees. They were not impressed, so we walked off into the tunnel, with bats flying all around our heads. After the tunnel, we climbed higher. Eventually, we reached the top of the fort. Some say that it used to be a Buddhist Monastery, but now it is a ruin. Still, the views were very impressive. There were walls running for miles and miles. A load of school kids came to join us, so we went back down and out the gate. The fort was really excellent, and definitely worth the money
Ellora Caves
Up early and back to the bus station, we jumped on a bus that would take us to Ellora Caves. These are 34 hand cut caves, dating back to the year 600 AD, cut into the side of a mountain. Caves 1-12 are Buddhist caves. There were both Mahayana and Theravada styles, with Buddhas cut to a style that we had never seen before. The caves went back to 50 metres in length. Caves 13-29 are Hindu caves, with the premier one being Kailasanatha. You have to pay $US5.00 to get in, or 250 Rupees. The locals only pay 10 Rupees, and it was quite funny to watch them whinge that they had to pay that much. I really felt like saying to them, "Shut the fuck up idiot, when you have to pay 250, then you have something to whinge about "!!! But Lucy wouldn't let me. Now this cave was huge. Carved from the top down out of 85000 cubic metres of rock. A huge elephant before the entrance to the two storey temple. We climbed all over it. It was awesome. Up there with Petra, well, nearly. After seeing it all, we moved through the rest of the Hindu temples, but after Kailasanatha, the rest were a bit of a let down. The last 5 were Jain temples. 3 were ok, 1 was not finished, so it gave you a good idea as to how it was cut out, whilst the last one, Chhota Kailsa, was a smaller version of Kailasanatha. You did not need a guide or a book to tell you this. It was so fucking obvious !!! By the end of the day, we were pretty much caved out, but it had been a good day, never the less.
Ajanta Caves
I would like to be able to say that we went, but we didn't. After the previous day, we were very caved out so we decided to give it a miss. Basically, there are more hand cut caves, but the insides have paintings, unlike Ellore's, which have carvings in them. We did speak to a girl who went, and she said that it was hard to look at caves for two days straight, and the Ajanta ones were very badly lit, so we were better off with the one's under our belts. Was this true, we would never know
