David and I visited India over the Christmas break. We went to Ajanta & Ellora with my parents for a couple of days and spent another three days in Goa. The rest of the time was devoted to family in Bombay.
Ajanta is the site of several rock cut cave monuments containing (what used to be) beautiful paintings and sculptures, mostly Buddhist religious art. Ellora is a series of temples carved out of the rock face of the adjoining hills. Ajanta is the older site, with some caves dating from 200 BC. Ellora is 5th - 10th century according to Wikipedia. Both - they are usually bracketed together - are very well known within India though less so outside India. All the India guide books recommend them but they probably qualify as ‘adventurous’ for the average foreign tourist. Primarily because they are in the middle of nowhere tourism-wise - unless you count the water wheel in Aurangabad. The caves of Ajanta are particularly worth a look with their majestic setting in the side of a sheer cliff, looking out into a peaceful valley. And one is not incessantly harassed unlike the more popular tourist destinations in the north.
We flew in to Aurangabad which is the usual launching pad for a visit to Ajanta and Ellora. We went to Ellora on the first day in a hired car with a hired driver. It is less than an hour from Aurangabad while Ajanta is about twice as far. Both journeys are on crappy highways going through very rural country. You drive past several one horse (cow?) towns, sugarcane and cotton fields and countryside that is very green but in a burnt, dusty sort of way. The villages look painfully small and sparse, the huts tiny and primitive. However the inhabitants are not badly off. I base this on the fact that the cattle all looked healthy, well fed and content with life. In fact their horns were painted bright colours so they looked positively festive. It is an interesting drive if you have the mental discipline to ignore the insane maneuvering of both your own driver as well as the car careening towards you down the not-quite-2-lane highway.
The temples of Ellora are a wonderful sight despite their centuries long exposure to the elements. They must have been truly magnificent back when the statues still had noses and mouths. Interestingly the site has temples devoted to all three major religions born in India - Jainism, Buddhism and Hinduism. Of these the Kailash temple is the largest, best preserved and most famous. A two storey temple, twice the area of the Parthenon and carved out of a single rock 1200 years ago. So, an impressive sight.
In some parts we noticed a couple of patches of surviving paint. No dull browns these, the paint is startlingly bright greens and blues. Curious to realise that the original brightly painted, gay facades bear little resemblance to the dignified sand coloured columns associated with Hindu temple sculpture today.
A History channel program made the same point about Roman architecture: the noble marble structures we admire so much were once painted in gaudy colours. Our ancestors were not afraid of colour.
An enjoyable visit, but slightly marred by the presence of several school trips. Hordes of giggling girls and shouting boys did not enhance the atmosphere.
On our way back to town we stopped at Daulatabad Fort, one of those famously impenetrable medieval forts. Flashback to high school history class - In the 1300s the crazy Tughlaq ruler decided to move his empire's capital from Delhi to Daulatabad. Nothing wrong with that, except he took the ‘moving’ part literally and marched the entire population of Delhi 700 miles south to the new capital which did not have even an adequate water supply. Much misery and death ensued. Usually this fort is precisely the kind of place I enjoy scrambling around in, but I was tired by the time we got there so we only spent a short time there.
