Spelunking in Ajanta
As mentioned in an earlier blog - Nelius and I joined the Hyderabad expat trek to Aurangabad.
(Hyderabad is known for being the best in India for a few things, but two lesser known facts are that it has the best airport in India and the best expat society!)
It was an incredible journey of exploration, that departed from the Secunderabad station in Hyderabad. Roughly 60 firangi (foreigners) taking the 10 hour train ride to Aurangabad.
The train ride was a long interesting experience - good conversation and red wine flowed while delicious snacks were consumed. We also enjoyed a biryani train meal and marvelled at the bathroom with a hole that drops straight onto the tracks!
We arrived around midnight at our hotel in Aurangabad, and rose early the next morning to visit the caves at Ajanta (a 2-3 hour bus ride away).
It is hard to describe what we found - so let me take a time out to try and give you some background. The work on these caves started around 2 BC and the first 5 caves took 400 years to complete! Talk about long term planning and commitment. The reason why it took so long is that these caves are all man-made - they didn’t exist, but were hammered out with chisels over centuries. There are 29 caves that were completed around 6 BC, but were abandoned shortly after that and were “lost” to humanity for more than a thousand years. They were accidentally rediscovered by John Smith (a British army officer) on a hunting expedition.
When you look at these pictures - imagine what it must have looked like before the caves were carved. It was a mountain face with a nasty drop. All the caves were cut from the top down, and all these cave temples consist of one piece of stone - the mountain.
It is difficult to convey the size of these caves and the staggering amount of work it must have taken. The rock here is so hard that apparently the iron chisels that were used to carve these caves only lasted for 2 hours. I would put a serious vote in for the caves at Ajanta (and Ellora) to be counted as one of the “Seven” Wonders of the World. After all - the outlasted 6 of the original 7 …
Not only did these caves survive for more than 1300 years, the paintings inside also survived. Some have been blemished by time, others by inconsiderate occupants and visitors, but it is amazing to see works of art survive this long.
Wandering between and in these caves were a truly humbling experience and makes me wonder whether anything that we build in our lifetime will survive and be admired in thousand years. I was looking forward to fun weekend outing which included a few sights - I did not anticipate to be amazed and awed by what was created with centuries of sweat and hard work.
This was not the end of our journey, but it is the end of this blog entry.
If you thought these caves were impressive - just wait until I tell you about the ones at Ellora …
Pir milenge
Theo Scheffler
March 31st, 2009 at 9:29 am
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