Ellora Caves

Today has been a 'wow' day. Our hotel is very very close  to the caves so there  was no driving needed to get there. Once there I was amazed to find the entrance fee was 250 rupees ($5) for me and 100 for Tarun, and what's more there were no queues and we could drive right up to the entrance to the caves and had no parking issues. This is a mind blowing place that not too many people seem to know about.

Our first reaction was 'wow.' They were huge and so well preserved. Words can't describe how they looked.

 It is estimated that it took at least 100 years and the chiselling out over of 3 million cubic feet of rock to create the biggest cave. The caves represent remarkable memorials of Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism and contain  amazing carvings and structures.

As often happens I had my fans wanting a photo !! Wonder if they pin it on their wall :-)

We only went into the best of the caves as there were far too many and it would have taken us all day to have seen them all.

Unfortunately the Ajanta Caves, about 100 kms away, are closed on Tuesdays so we're going to have to miss them as we need to start heading back towards Delhi so I don't miss my plane home April 9th. No matter how much time I arrange to spend here it's never enough and the time goes so very quickly.

After the caves we headed into the city of    

Aurangabad about 25 kms away. This was a pretty and interesting drive. There are lots of very brightly coloured flowers around at this time and there are the usual ruins. We saw a fort perched on top of a little hill and enjoyed watching a laden truck only just making it through one of the gates that had obviously been part of the wall surrounding the lower areas of the fort.

For several days I'd been seeing men selling sugar cane juice on the side of the road and today I finally got to try it! Yum!

It was really good and I'm so glad we don't have this at home or I'd be drinking it all the time. The man squeezes the cane through a press thingy then adds some lemon. It would have been even better with ice but as it's made with local water I gave that a miss.

As I've said before, India has a surprise around every corner but I didn't really expect to see a mini Taj Mahal here .. Or maybe it could be described as a cheap copy. Never-the-less it was still quite lovely.

This mausoleum ( Bibi-Ka-Maqbara) was built in 1679 by the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb in honour of his wife and obviously modelled on the Taj Mahal at Agra.

It was a very hot day so it was back to the hotel for a rest in the garden. There's a large group of indian women who spend all day sweeping up all of the leaves that are falling off the trees.

With bad wifi here we tend to move around to try and find a better spot. We did this as usual today and left a few things, including my bag, a short distance from where we were sitting. I'm very glad Tarun happened to notice the monkey who had gone over to inspect our stuff as I'm sure he could have very easily taken a liking to my bag, containing the travel essentials like my credit card and passport, and carted it off somewhere unreachable. I haven't got used to watching out for monkeys yet!

Thought we'd give the hotel restaurant a miss as the food isn't that great so went out on the street. I had believed that all Indian streets went crazy at night but not here. Every thing was dark and quiet so we retreated back to the hotel and had cheese  omelettes for the second time today... I think it's the only thing they can cook well.

Tomorrow we are going to make another early start and head to Surat... back on the Gujarat coast. Early starts are great as we get to travel when it's cooler and the roads are quieter. We also have more time to explore when we arrive at our destination.