I begun the day in the train station ticket office trying to get onto a train to Agra for later this evening. This was not easy because all of the seats had been filled, so I tried getting an ‘emergency’ ticket. Some of the tickets are held back on popular routes for tourists. I was lucky enough to get onto a train tomorrow and booked into 3AC, which basically means the bottom rung of the Air Conditioned carriages.
Following the train station jaunt, I took a three hour bus to Ajanta Caves…
Ajanta caves date from around the 2nd Century BC to the 6th Century AD and are amongst the oldest monastry like carvings in all of India. They are believed to have been abandoned once the focus had shifted to the caves of Ellora shortly after they’d been built. Here they lay, forgotten, until 1819 when a group of men on a hunting excursion came across them literally by chance. Now they are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The caves line a steep horseshoe shaped ravine with the Waghore River flowing below. All of the caves are Buddhist so I had an unofficial ‘biggest-Buddha-carving’ competition. It wasn’t hard as the Buddhas seemed to get larger with each cave carved.
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