Maharashtra – Aurangabad

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Day 106-108 Maharashtra – Aurangabad

This town is around 2 hours away from Nanded. Here you can easily reach the Ajanta and Ellora caves. The Buddhist caves of Ajanta 105km northeast of Aurangabad, date from around 200BC to AD 650. They were rediscovered in 1819 by a British hunting party who stumbled upon them. There are 30 caves cut into the steep face of a horseshoe-shaped rock gorge on the Waghore River. It's quite amazing to see how they gouged out these caves from one piece of rock. They start cutting away the rock from the top and work down and then into the rock. Difficult to describe.

He's sooooo been watching too much Lord of the Rings.

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The 34 Ellora caves are a combination of Buddhist (AD 600-800), Hindu (AD 600-900) and Jain (AD 800-1000) temples. Again they are carved from a 2km-long escarpment. We found one of the Jain temples amazing and the Hindu – Kailasa temple was remarkable. The Buddhist temples of Ajanta seemed more elaborate than the ones at Ellora and the Ajanta temples had beautiful paintings depicting Buddha's life and teachings.

We also went to the Daulatabad fort. Jag's loved it. He was telling me how well it was designed and if the enemy broke through certain defences they would be faced with an onslaught and so on. He's sooooo been watching too much Lord of the Rings.