Wednesday, October 4 Ajanta Caves

I slept the entire way on the train, and when I woke up in the morining, people were spilling out of their seats and sleeping in the aisleway. An old man had his feet across the aisle right next to my head, and some annoying voice was chanting really loud. Got into Aurangabad at 7am and was instantly bombarded with the usual touts. One tout, for example, took me to the India Tourism Office, where they offered tours of Ellora and Ajanta, along with city tours of Aurangabad, Paithan, and Shirdi. Since Aurangabad is a perfect jumping-off location for these sites, it’s the most-visited city in Maharashtra (besides Mumbai), even though the city itself is not worth writing home about. I signed up for an Ajanta tour today, and then the tout rickshaw driver tried to charge me 20 Rs for a 10 Rs ride, and then tried to convince me that he wasn’t out to cheat me. While getting money from the ATM, I was followed the entire way by begging kids and rickshaw drivers. The tour, run by the government, was fine. A lot of other rich old men on the tour wanted to talk to me, so was the tour guide. They were personally offended that India made me pay 25 times the Indian nationals rate, since I am studying at Delhi University. The site of the Ajanta Caves was up a long hill, and if you really wanted, four guys offered to carry you in a palanquin to the caves. The caves themselves were discovered in the 19th Century by Englishman John Smith. They are a set of monolithic Buddhist carvings in a crescent-shaped rock mountain. They are designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and with good reason. The work that must have gone into their creation was amazing. Each cave was chiseled out from top to bottom by teams of thousands of workers over a period of 800 years, each armed with nothing more than a pick and hammer. From this they chiseled out columns, statues of the Buddha, stupas, and rooms for living and meditating. I was one of three foreign tourists and a lot of Indians. Also in the caves were paintings depicting scenes of the Buddha’s life, his eight human forms, and other people of the times. Semi-precious stones were inlaid, also, to make bright blue and yellow glints. There were 30 caves in total, culminating in cave no. 26, famous for the reclining Buddha inside. Afterwards, we ate a lunch thali and were attacked by hawkers. Then we all drove home via nonpolluting bus (in other words, just extra money in the Maharashtra government’s pocket) and regular bus back to Aurangabad. I signed up for an Ellora & Aurangabad tour tomorrow, which left the dilemma of what to do for the third day in Aurangabad. I don’t really want to stay here any longer, plus I want to maximize my time in Mumbai. So I went online to change my train tickets for tomorrow night, but they were full. While in the internet café, I was Facebooking of course, and the worker I guess was looking over my shoulder and said, your friends in America are hot. He especially wanted to look at Whitney Champion’s profile, so I wrote her a note saying that some creepy guy in India thought she was hot. I’m sure she’ll love that. I next stopped off at the bus station, where I was at the window, and some typical pushy old man was putting his head in front of me, trying to cut and interrupt my conversation with the bus stand worker. The bus guy shooed him away and was listening to me, and the other guy pushed me out of the way, midsentence. I got extremely angry and pushed him back, saying, “I was first” in Hindi. After my question got answered and my tickets for Mumbai booked, he glared at me, and told me, “Come over here, I need to tell you something”, so I stayed to talk to him. Not. I ran quickly out of the bus stand, through the muddy back alleys, into a rickshaw. I got dinner at a busy place, so I expected it to be good. Wrong. There was curry spilled all over the floor, dirty onions lying around, a liquor store in the restaurant, and their version of vegetable pulao was left-over fried rice from their ‘Chinies’ menu. After probably food poisoning myself, I looked for a hotel, which was hell. All the cheap places were booked, which left me with few options. One place had a room whose walls were brown, trash was still in the room, and a non-attached bathroom without lights. The other options were places for Rs 350, and finally I found decent place for 200 Rs. I did laundry because I only have one pair of clothes since I forgot to pack my swim shorts.