We spent 2 and a half days in Aurangabad. The main attraction is a series of rock cut temples at two different sites. For our entire time, we just decided to bite the bullet and hire a car and driver for each day. That gave us the flexibility to go where and when we wanted to and the price averaged out to 1600 rupees per day plus time, so about $25. It totally cut down on the stress that built up in Mumbai, although the driving in general is a little nuts. On a two lane highway (one each way), there is actually five lanes of which a motorcycle or bicycle takes one and cars, tuktuks, trucks and bullock carts all take two. At any given location, those lanes could be taken by traffic going in either direction, although more often the left hand lanes are going the same direction as you and the righter ones are coming at you. Since all these vehicles go significantly different speeds, you can imagine that there is a lot darting in and out, or in short, organized chaos. It makes me glad that I wasn't driving.
On the first day, we visited Ajanta, which is about 100km from Aurangabad and took about 3 hours to get there. The site is composed of a number of Buddhist caves that date from 200BC to 600AD. The caves were lost to the vegetation at one point, so a large number of the paintings are still relatively intact. The site was only rediscovered by an English hunter in the 1819. The paintings depict stories from Buddhist mythology and even include techniques like perspective that were lost to medieval european church artists. Along with the paintings, there are a number of sculptures beautifully rendered in the stone. Originally, they would have been painted too, but most of the paint is gone. It's really quite jaw dropping that these works are 10 times older than my country. I could describe the site more, but pictures are really the best way without actually making the trek.
Our timing visiting the sites was somewhat challenging. Kids in India were on their x-mass vacation from school, so many had trips to view the Ajanta and Ellora caves. This meant that the sites were packed. Also, we couldn't just wander around by ourselves too easily. Many of these kids had never seen a foreigner before so we instantly became one of the main attractions. As a result, we were asked many times for pictures with large groups of people and everybody wanted to practice their English on us and shake our hands. Though this can be charming from a group of young children, it becomes overwhelming when the groups include teenage boys and saying "yes" results in a flood of requests that will take a good 15 min to get through.
On our second day, we visited the larger site of Ellora. This site is newer (600-1000AD), it is much larger. It is actually composed of three different types of temples: Buddhist, Hindu and Jain. The temples were continuously used either for shelter or prayer until they were turned into a museum, so the original paintings were all lost. However, the sculptures are amazing. The most fantastic of which is the Kailasa Temple that took 150 years to build and was carved down into the slope of the escarpment. It is about 7 meters high and making it involved removing over 200,000 tons of rock. It's hard to think of people making it by hand with no margin for error. Here's some pictures that try to capture the majesty of the place. Really though, you just need to go at some point.
On the way back from Ellora, we stopped at a textiles shop. The famous textiles of Aurangabad are called Himroo. It's a cotton and silk blend hand woven with silver threads in a way that cannot be replicated on machine. We saw a quick demonstration of how the Himroo is done and then Catherine had fun finding some shawls and haggling the store keeper down. Unfortunately, the silver thread in the Himroo means that it doesn't drape well for a shawl and so after the great demonstration, we ended up buying ones made by punch card.
The fort itself was built by a sneaky bastard. It was never attacked, probably because its defenses were so ridiculous. In the outer wall, the main gate has three levels. At each point, once you break down a door, you enter a courtyard with two more doors. While you decide which way to go, the defenders are shooting at you from above. If you pick wrong, the path either dead ends or dumps the army into a crocodile pond.
After the fort, we had linner, including french fries for Catherine since she had been craving them, and then we went to the airport for our first flight to Mumbai. Then, in Mumbai, we had a 4 hour layover until the flight to Goa. Unfortunately, while in the Mumbai airport, at the (terrible) bar, we received the sad news that Catherine's Poppop had passed away. It was a poetic end to the ordeal; when her grandparents found out that Catherine was born, they were in Bahrain and proceeded spend the evening at the hotel bar. Thank you for the memories Poppop, we'll miss you.
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