Ajanta & Ellora

We blasted out of Bombay for 2 days to Aurangabad to see the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Ajanta and Ellora.  Carved straight into basalt, Ajanta consists of 29 all-Buddhist caves that were carved and elaborately painted between 200BCE-400AD. 

 Ellora is a later, more extensive collection of 17 Hindu, 12 Buddhist and 5 Jain caves (600AD-1000AD)  The “world’s largest monolithic sculpture" is the Temple of Kailasa.  Just so it's clear, they began with a solid mountain, started carving down into the rock, and left anything that didn't look like a temple--talk about working in negative space!   Seven thousand laborers removed more than 200,000 tons of rock over 150 years--so how many rock tons/laborer does that make?  We'd read about it, and as you can imagine, we were agog seeing it in person. 

What we weren’t prepared for, however, was the curiosity and attention directed at us: Hello! Hello! What is your name? Where are you from? This last one seemed almost rhetorical until I was asked if I came from Japan.  Our celebrity status extended to scores of requests for photos....of us.  The two of us on our own.  The two of us with their friends.  The two of us with their children. Videos of us. A 25-year-old hipster even whipped out his cell for a close up.  Who knew we rated right up there with a Heritage site!? 

 

Oh, and did I mention the monkeys...?