Last Monday was part 2 of the field trip, a journey out to the rock temples at Ellora. The sculptures there were amazing. Kailash Temple in particular drew everyone's attention. Our tour guide told us that it's the largest monolithic structure in the world, and even if that's not true, it is seriously impressive. I was amazed at how different all of the caves were; each one evoked a completely different feeling, but all of them left me in awe. Part of why I liked Ellora better than Ajanta may have been that there were fewer people, but the statues are also more impressive than paintings you can barely see because they've deteriorated and there's virtually no light in the cave. The scale of the temples in Ellora was much grander than the ones at Ellora, which probably has something to do with religious differences, too. Ellora is primarily Hindu, and Ajanta is mostly Buddhist.
I was a little disappointed in the trip because there was so much to see, but it's a generous estimate to say we saw a quarter of it. People were complaining about the heat and being hungry on the first day (we were in the middle of nowhere), and on the second day, the tour guide and the IES teacher decided which temples were "important" to see and skipped the rest. That was frustrating; they live here and can come back whenever they have a free weekend, but I don't know when or if I'll get to go back. We saw some pretty cool stuff, though. I'm happy I went.
On our way back to Aurangabad from Ellora, we stopped at the tiny Taj! It's another tomb for a woman, but this one was made by the woman's son because her husband the emperor was a cheap jerk. (I don't actually know why he didn't want to give his wife a nice tomb, but compared to the story for the real Taj Mahal, this one is sad.) It's very strange going there. They copied almost every detail of the Taj, but poorly. The architecture is imperfect and not at all elegant, and it's completely disproportionate. The minarets are taller than the dome, and the main body of the tomb looks squished compared to how tall it is. However, like in Agra, the Indian tourists there wanted to take our pictures. We said no. We made friends with an Indian schoolgirl, though, who was adorable and shy and kept waving and smiling and looking like she wanted to talk to us but was afraid to. It was pretty cute.
The train ride home to Delhi was less than stellar. Though we had eaten dinner on Monday night and breakfast Tuesday morning in the hotel to avoid anyone getting food poisoning, about half of us (myself included) were sick on the train ride back. I didn't want to have to throw up in the train bathroom, so I took some medicine and slept. Surprisingly, it worked. I slept much of the way back, which I'm very thankful for because it would have been utterly miserable otherwise.
Pictures on Flickr of the pretty Buddhist and Hindu rock art. :)
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