Ajanta Caves

After yesterday's fun with public transport, we decided to catch the specific tourist bus out to Ajanta Caves, which was quite a bit further (3 hours rather than 45 minutes). Some French girls we'd spoken to briefly said the road was pretty bad. The tourist bus left from near our hotel and was quite comfortable - large padded seats, air conditioning etc. And it was only 1/3rd full so we could spread out and recline. The journey out there passed without incident.

Had some lunch at the on-site cafe which didn't quite sit right with me, I felt slightly off after eating it. But I soldiered on, checking out another series of mostly-Hindu caves this time, all arranged in a cliffside around a horseshoe bend of a river. Lots of impressive carvings here, mainly of Hindu deities like Ganesh, Shiva, Vishnu and so on. Quite a similar site Ellora yesterday, and just as impressive. A couple of the caves were large cathedral-style rock chambers with vaulted ceilings and excellent acoustics. You can just imagine the monks chanting their mantras.

Hopped back on the coach at 3pm, ready to commence the journey back home. We set off, and soon stopped on a mountain pass road in a traffic jam. A pair of trucks had collided, causing one to lose a huge load of cotton (it's standard practice here to massively overload trucks). With the blockage being exacerbated by people driving on the wrong side of the road to skip the queue, it took us over two hours to get past the accident. Eventually we made it past and trundled our way back home. After stopping for a tea break, we didn't make it back to Aurangabad until about 8:30pm, which, considering we'd left home at about 7:15am, made for a pretty long day!Read more