p.r.bullen - travelogue

Part 1: Ajanta & Elora and Bombay

Well, we did the three week trip by train, starting off with an overnight journey to Jalgaon. We met a nice British couple, Tom and Adah, on the train, and in Jalgaon the four of us hired a car (and driver, as always in India) for the trip to the caves at Ajanta and then on to Aurangabad. The caves are actually temples (mostly Buddhist), carved out of a cliff-face on the outside of a sharp bend in a river (almost a U-turn in the river), and from the center temple you can see all the others. As you approach them, from one end, you get a spectacular view of the cave temples laid out one after the other, disappearing around the bend.

Being Buddhist, they're fairly simple, mostly large chambers with lots of room to meditate and large statues of the Buddha. They were more ornate, with painting of scenes from the live(s) of the Buddha, but most of the paintings have succumbed to the ravages of time. However, despite their simplicity there are a lot of fascinated carvings and sculptures, especially ornamenting the columns. It was a brutally hot day, and the caves were refreshingly cool. Some were unfinished (odd, that), which let you see how they'd carved them out -- long shafts straight into the rock, then carve out the rock in between. Some were more dormitory-style, others were long halls with a large Buddha at the far end, and pillars down both sides "holding up" an arched ceiling. Huge efforts put into these.

On then, to Aurangabad for the night in a nice hotel (it had been a long day, and we were still getting used to train travel), then off to Ellora in the morning. Late morning, for us, early for Tom & Adah, though we did hook up for dinner that night.

Ellora is only 30 km. away, so we took an auto-rickshaw (little 3-wheeler "tuk-tuks". Nasty little polluting 2-stroke engines.) We passed a ruined fort & palace on the way, where a king had marched the capital & occupants down from Delhi, built the fort, palace & town, ... then marched everyone back to Delhi 15 years later. Indian rulers seem to have had a penchant for this, as the same occurred at Fatehpur Sikri (near Agra). Odd. Anyhow, the caves here were mostly Hindu (though there were a few Buddhist ones and a few Jain temples even). They were more ornate, as you'd expect Hindu temples to be, and much bigger. Most had a large courtyard carved out in front, and THEN the temple-cave carved in behind it, often running into several stories (and, with such high ceilings, the equivalent of five-stories-high). Unbelievable quantities of stone were carved out.

Now, if this wasn't enough, the central temple (the courtyard in front was sooo big I didn't realize it had been carved out at first), the central temple was a complete "monolithic"" free-standing temple carved out of the living rock, with a bridge leading back to a balcony overlooking the courtyard (entering, it seemed a canopy), plenty of space all around (e.g., it included two life-size stone elephants and room to see them properly), and then more shrines, halls, rooms and such carved out of the surrounding rock. One section of halls & shrines was 4 levels high and had a sky-light at the top! And quite ornate, everything. The mind boggles (where did all the stone go?).

My favorite were the 4 Jain temples all the way at the end, in a little cluster, a semicircle, with more delicate carvings, each connecting to the next through back passages or stairways. On the way back to town, we stopped off a the fort (see above) but didn't really give it any attention -- maybe next time. Back at the hotel, Tom & Adah let us shower in their room, which was nice. Dinner, then off to Bombay (Mumbai, now) on another overnighter.

Bombay is a big city. We'd booked into a place out on the peninsula (the old part of town, very built up and with a very Mediterranean big-city feel to it, in an odd "Raj" sort of way. Like Barcelona built by the British and full of Indians...) We stayed a block away from the Gateway to India ("India Gate"), an arc de triomphe built for a visit to India by some British king earlier this century.

While there, we dropped in to see Leyburn Callahan, the Irish Honorary Consul in Bombay, and enjoyed a very pleasant dinner with him. He has been in India for decades, and has a wealth of fascinating stories, some of which he shared with us.

Aingeal had to visit an NGO in Bombay. Their headquarters were across town, and the trip there gave us a great opportunity to see quite a bit of the city (as distinct from the sights). I was very taken with Bombay, and vowed to return for a longer stay; it had that big-city hustle and bustle that I hadn't really seen in India before (there was some in Calcutta, but somewhat different).

We also took a boat ride out to Elephanta Island, to see... another cave-temple! It was very good, actually, and the ride was very enjoyable, if longer than we'd expected. I realize that I've told the time in Bombay completely out of order, but that makes little difference. We did finish up, however, by visiting the Prince of Wales Museum, a huge Raj pile and well worth visiting from both a "museuming" and architectural point of view. Some lovely miniatures, nice Tibetan artifacts. Back to the hotel, a quick change, and then we caught another overnighter, to Madras, in Tamil Nadu ("The Land of the Tamils").

Part 1: Ajanta & Elora and Bombay