Weekend Travels

Both Apoorva and I were feeling better this weekend so we decided to take a small trip to Aurangabad, which is a small city about 400kms east of Mumbai. It's name means "Built by the Throne", named after Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb who founded the city. It's just as hot as Mumbai, but because of the open spaces there was a nice breeze. The landscape actually was really beautiful and reminded me of the Southwest back in the US. Here is a picture of Apoorva and I at one of the more scenic places off the highway (photo courtesy of our "rented" driver).

The city is famous for the many historical sites that surround it, including the Ellora and Ajanta caves. These ancient "caves" are temples (Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain) carved into cliffs. The first day we went to the Ellora caves. There are about 30 caves total, devoted to all three religions. You can see in the picture below that they really are just carved out of the cliff face.
The largest one was completely open on top. It was a three story temple carved from the top down. It was huge and amazing. There were thousands of carvings of Hindu gods and stories.

After that we stopped at a roadside fruit stand that was selling a local fruit called sitaphal. It really is the weirdest fruit I have every seen. Here is a picture of the outside.

It's so soft you can just rip it in half. Inside are all these mushy pods with big, black seeds in them. You pull the pods our and each the soft flesh and spit out the seeds. They are quite tasty, just really messy to eat. Very slimy.



We then went to see the mini-Taj Mahal. It was the tomb that the city's founder built for his wife. Pretty cool, since I have been unable to get to Agra to see that actual Taj.

The next day we traveled about 100kms to see the Ajanta "caves" . They were pretty similar to the Ellora caves, except these ones had paintings on the inside that were preserved from the elements, so they were still quite clear and bright. Didn't really get any good pictures, because we were not allowed to use flash. Here is a view of the outside of the caves. As you can see there were a lot of stairs. You had the option of hiring 4 men to carry you around on a "litter". Of course I did not hire them but we did pay them a few Rs each to just have them pick me up for a photo-op.


Favorite picture of the weekend: I finally got to see MONKEYS!!! I saw them at both caves. This one was taken at the Ajanta caves. They were all over the place, but this mommy and her baby were the cutest and were sitting so close to walkway.Funny Story of the weekend: On the way out of the Ajanta caves we stopped at the various stores that were selling handicrafts. We purchased a few items from this one guy. He noticed I was interested in one particular piece, but I decided to get something else. For some reason he thought I didn't want it because of the price. After we had purchased our stuff he followed us out of the store trying to get us to buy that particular piece for a lower price. Apoorva explained to him that we were not going to buy it, so he left. A minute later, as we were getting in our car, the guy showed up again with an even lower price. He ran after the car shouting lower and lower prices. I guess Apoorva is a good bargainer, even when he's not trying :-)