Ajanta and Ellora caves

We had another great weekend of being tacky tourists. We hired a driver to take us to Ellora and Ajanata caves. These caves are about 350 kms from Pune so the drive was long and exhausting. Thankfully we just had to sit there! I was told a little about these caves but I was not prepared for what I was about to see.

The caves in Ellora emphasized carvings rather than paintings like Ajanta. The main cave here is #16 and it blew my mind. The thing is absolutely huge and the detail is out of this world. It is all carved out of the mountain so it is one piece. They don't bring stones in to complete work. Everything is carved out by Bhuddist monks. To top it off these caves were created about 1500 years ago!

At Ajanta the caves are carved into this mountain overtop of what was once a lush river. The story goes that these, like the Ellora caves, were created 1500 years ago. The monks worked on these caves over a period of 900 yrs as a tribute to Buddha. At sometime during the completion of the work Buddhism was abandoned and all the monks were forced out of the area. Over 1000 years the forest and nature reclaimed the caves as their own and hid them from humans. In the late 1800's they were rediscovered by a foreign traveller. Since then the government has been restoring and preserving them so they can be appreciated by everyone on the planet.

The pictures from these sites are still on my cam. I will be posting them once I get them downloaded from Jonathan (yes I forgot my USB cable).