Ajanta

Ajanta. What a fabulous place. Worth coming all this way to see; worth that sleepless night on the train (because I had to get off at four in the morning) to Aurangabad; worth the smoke, dust and pollution of Aurangabad; worth the three hour ride in a rattley bus along potholed roads; worth the climb up hundreds of steps in the midday heat (because the bus took so long).

As I reached the top of the steps my first sight of the caves at Ajanta took my breath away. Twenty six Buddhist monasteries and temples had been carved into the side of a sheer rockface, over a period of seven hundred years. The rockface is shaped like a giant horseshoe, overlooking a small forest. The temples and monasteries which appear half way up the rockface have beautifully sculpted pillars at their entrances. The position of these caves reminded me of the ancient cave dwellings of New Mexico, and they were made at aproximately the same time. But there the similarity ends. The caves at Ajanta are elegantly sculpted monasteries and temples, with rows of pillars inside and vaulted roofs. The walls, ceilings and pillars were originally covered with paintings in glowing colours. In one of the caves, carved in the fifth century AD, the paintings on the walls and ceilings have miraculously remained, so that you can begin to imagine how all the other caves would have been. For seven hundred years or more, Buddhist monks were inspired to excavate the rock to create these temples, carving and painting them with great skill and devotion. Here in this secluded place they found peace and tranquility. They were surrounded by nature and at night they had a clear view of the starry sky.

In one monastery a group of Buddhist monks from Thailand, sitting in front of a great stone Buddhist statue, were chanting a Buddhist prayer. The sound reverberated around the cave. A guardian sat at the entrance to each cave, making sure that everyone took their shoes off before entering and no one used flash photography. Although hundreds of tourists, mostly Indian, had come to visit Ajanta, it was supremely peaceful. I was deeply moved.

Elora

Next day I went to see the caves at Elora. These did not move me in the same way as those at Ajanta. The Hindu Kailasha temple was hewn out of the rock between 733 and 773 and is a great monolithic structure, caved in one piece, isolated from the surrounding rock, a truly miraculous feat. It is not quite finished and some of the pillars are emerging from the rock, statues of dancing girls just beginning to appear.It's as though the sulptors could see the shape of the temple within the rock and had only to chip away to uncover it. The temples and monasteries at Elora are scattered about the landscape and some are Buddhist, some are Jain and some are Hindu. Many of them are very large, but austere, unlike the intricately carved caves of Ajanta. I spent the morning in the company of an old American hippy who had been travelling around India on the cheap since December, despite two very bad hips. He walked very slowly with the help of two sticks and took rikshaws from one temple to the next. By the end of the morning he was exhausted and went back to his hotel. I on the other hand, caught one of those shared taxis (five people in the front seat - I was sitting on the door knob) to Daulatabad.

Daulatabad

Daulatabad was a hill fort. The evil ruler of Delhi forced the entire city to leave and walk to Daulatabad, where they built a new city for him around the fort, increasing the fortifications with moats, walls, ramparts, secret tunnels and all manner of ingenious measures to prevent attack. Most of the people from Delhi died during the forced march. But those who survived did a marvelous job, creating this enormous fortification. The outer walls stretch for miles and miles.