Reclining Buddha (at east the first metre of this 10m long statue), Ellora Caves---------------------------
Greetings from Aurangabad - from where? - Aurangabad? Indeed, we certainly questioned this as well when we booked our flights from Bangalore. Aurangabad may, in fact, go down as the first place I've ever flown into that I had never heard of. And like so many things in spectacularly populous India, Aurangabad turns out to be a bustling city of over 1.5 million. It's also a very unpleasant tumble of a place - with lots of sewage-rich creeks and garbage strewn everywhere. But the city is not what we came here for - and it is wholly redeemed by its proximity to two stunning cave collections - in Ellora (30km away) and Ajanta (110 km away) - both UNESCO World Heritage sites.
In both places, the good old ancients carved Buddhist and Hindu monasteries from the solid rock of the basalt of volcanic mountain faces - thirty-odd temples and shrines in each place. The Ajanta caves are entirely Buddhist and feature many paintings that, while faded, are clearly viewable and date back to the second century BC. Colourful portrayals of a clearly rich civilization in the first centuries of Buddhism. Ellora has a mix of Buddhist, Hindu and Jain temples including a mind-boggling multi-storied Kailash temple carved from the top down out of the mountain - the world's largest monolithic structure and a real beaut!.
As an avid history "buff", I find my experiences in India and Africa have made me redefine my concept of "old". Without discounting the charm and history of many of Europe's treasures, how do you measure these against Olduvai gorge in Tanzania with its remains and tools of perhaps the earliest humans dating back 1.3 million years? As I marvelled at the vivid panoramas of Buddha's life and times in the paintings in Ajanta, I found it hard to conceive of the fact that I was face-to-face with paintings that are over 2200 years old. They speak of an advanced civilization that was, at the time, clearly moving in faster and deeper directions than anything one might have encountered in "the West" at that time.
We bid farewell to this place we've never heard of and may never see again. Tomorrow, we fly north to Rajastahn for a few days of "holidays" (within a rater large holiday) in the lakeside city of Udaipur.
In both places, the good old ancients carved Buddhist and Hindu monasteries from the solid rock of the basalt of volcanic mountain faces - thirty-odd temples and shrines in each place. The Ajanta caves are entirely Buddhist and feature many paintings that, while faded, are clearly viewable and date back to the second century BC. Colourful portrayals of a clearly rich civilization in the first centuries of Buddhism. Ellora has a mix of Buddhist, Hindu and Jain temples including a mind-boggling multi-storied Kailash temple carved from the top down out of the mountain - the world's largest monolithic structure and a real beaut!.
As an avid history "buff", I find my experiences in India and Africa have made me redefine my concept of "old". Without discounting the charm and history of many of Europe's treasures, how do you measure these against Olduvai gorge in Tanzania with its remains and tools of perhaps the earliest humans dating back 1.3 million years? As I marvelled at the vivid panoramas of Buddha's life and times in the paintings in Ajanta, I found it hard to conceive of the fact that I was face-to-face with paintings that are over 2200 years old. They speak of an advanced civilization that was, at the time, clearly moving in faster and deeper directions than anything one might have encountered in "the West" at that time.
We bid farewell to this place we've never heard of and may never see again. Tomorrow, we fly north to Rajastahn for a few days of "holidays" (within a rater large holiday) in the lakeside city of Udaipur.
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