Aurangabad and Ajanta

Right now, it's Sunday night and I'm sitting in the Ajanta Ambassador Hotel in Aurangabad, on a bed that actually has padding and came with two pillows. Although that won't be true when I get around to putting this up on the interwebs; despite the fact that we're staying in a fancy hotel, we have to pay extra for Internet. And it's not cheap. And there are no internet cafes near the hotel.

Fifteen out of the sixteen of us students are here on an IES field trip. (The last one is in Rome visiting his girlfriend, who's studying in Spain this semester...) This trip is a complete contrast to last weekend; I'm very glad that I get to see how traveling on a budget compares to traveling with money. Second AC sleeper class for the 22-hour train ride here was exponentially better than the absolute cheapest sleeper class to Jaipur. Only two beds on top of each other instead of three; air conditioning; sheets, blanket and pillow provided; dinner & breakfast included (not good, but included); and curtains to close for privacy. Oh, and no commuters. Surprisingly, I used the train ride to catch up on my sleep. We left at about 1:30 p.m. on Friday and arrived in Aurangabad around 11:45 a.m. on Saturday. I napped for a little while in the afternoon on Friday and managed to get a full night's sleep that night even though the man on the bunk next to me was snoring really loudly and I woke up a whole bunch of times because I wasn't all that comfortable. But it was nice to sleep without worrying about when I had to get up. The ride itself was pretty uneventful, since we were mostly grouped together. In my berth, three out of the four beds were occupied by IES students, but the fourth guy who had a bed there only came to sleep. So during waking hours, other IES students came and hung out with us. It was fun and didn't drag by as slowly as I would have imagined. In fact, it was a much more pleasant experience than the plane ride from Newark to Delhi...I could at least stretch out and stand up and all that. And there was pretty scenery to watch during the daylight hours.

Aurangabad is hot. Delhi's been warming up a bit since I arrived, but here in the Aurangabad-Ajanta-Ellora area (which is in the state of Maharashtra, most of the way to Mumbai/Bombay) it's been about a hundred degrees Fahrenheit during the day and very, very sunny. One of the greatest things about the fancy hotel? Big swimming pool! We swam yesterday and today, which was quite lovely...it's a really nice way to end a long, hot, sweaty day. I couldn't remember the last time I was swimming in a pool; it was probably two years ago. 

Yesterday we went to Dalautabad Fort (yes, there are forts ALL over India), which was quite different from any of the forts in Delhi or anywhere else I've been. It's built on a hill - it essentially is the hill - and it has all kinds of tricky false doors and tunnels and crazy things like that. We had a guide who took us in the pitch-black, bat-filled tunnels (which smelled terrible) and told us horror stories about how the inhabitants of the fort used to pour boiling water down shafts, place poison-laced spears on the floors of the dark tunnels, and sit crouched in these little niches in said dark passageways waiting to attack the intruders. And there was a moat with crocodiles and lots of cannons...all kinds of good stuff. It was great fun. The bats were kind of creepy, though. The view from the (almost) top was pretty cool. We didn't go up to the very top because they were doing restoration work and our guide said that aside from a slightly better view, it was needless climbing and that the actual building wasn't that impressive at the top. And it was quite hot, and there was a lot of climbing involved. So we traipsed back down the hill to the bus, discovered that the two museums we were scheduled to go to were both closed (hooray travel agent!), and went back to the hotel for a swim. :) We wandered off own our own for dinner, which turned into ten of us at a rooftop restaurant of a hotel down the street. I love rooftops. As I think I've stated before, I really wish that the States utilized rooftops for more than just protection from the elements. Though I suppose, if I have to be rational, that it makes sense neither in Massachusetts nor upstate New York for anybody to design a rooftop restaurant or terrace or garden or anything of the sort. It's too damn cold to use it most of the year.

Anyway. Today we spent most of the day at the Ajanta caves, which are about a 2-hour (100-ish kilometer) drive away from the hotel and aren't really caves. They're rock temples carved into a cliff, and they're stunning. There is so much intricate carving and sculpting and painting, and it's remarkable how intact they've remained. I took so many pictures, so those will be up soon. And my Nikon is wonderful in low-light conditions, which made me very happy because flash photography was not allowed inside the temples. 

I think I have a picture of the same Buddha statue that's on the cover of one of my Buddhism books. Which I think is pretty sweet.

After walking and climbing in the hot sun during the hottest part of the day, we ate lunch in the only restaurant anywhere near the caves and headed back to the hotel. Three bathroom stops and a bunch of traffic later, we arrived back at the hotel, at which point I decided to explore the hotel grounds for a bit. Took some pictures of the pretty flowers and pool and the building, then swimming time again. Dinner was at the hotel tonight, and now I'm off to bed because we're leaving at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning to go to the caves at Ellora.

Namaste.