Ellora and Ajanta Caves

After Nasik I headed to Aurangabad, the town closest to Ellora and Ajanta Caves. There's no direct road that I could find on maps or anywhere else. I did find news of protests at some new tollway that goes to Aurangabad however, no idea if I went over that. Once I got on my bike the GPS was routing me through a 100km detour into a town to the north, but on the map I could see the roads going there. So it was time to try and navigate by guessing! 

I had some fun leaving the main roads and riding past lots of confused looking people. There was some rain the night before so I was wary about ending up in mud that day, luckily everything was sealed though. Once I got into Manmad I found a surprisingly large city for the middle of nowhere. Even the small cities here have millions of people in them. I found the reason for this place to exist was the massive natural gas plants just nearby which I had to ride past.

Before getting to Aurangubad I stopped at...

Ellora Caves

Now after a long break from touts this is where they started again. And just the people in general. At the ticket window everyone was barging in to get their ticket and pushing me out of the way, I pushed through eventually and got my ticket. Then outside the ticket office are heaps of touts trying to sell guidebooks to the caves. 

I told one of them no immediately but he kept going on about this book so I said no again, and told him I was not going to buy anything from him. Then he looks down and says ok. So then he pulls out a different book and starts asking me if I want to buy that. I told him no, and asked him if he understood, and then got him to repeat the word no with me... That was just outside the gate. 

Inside another person seemed to be walking with a group of people, I thought he was then, he asked me a bunch of usual Indian questions ('what's your name', 'where are you from', 'why did you come here', 'where are you going'). Then finally after a minute of this inane conversation he says he has a restaurant nearby that I can eat at... THANKS FOR LETTING ME KNOW.

Yet another one saw me and he had something to sell, as soon as he started talking I said no, then he paused, started again and I said no over him again. This went on a few times, he laughed and then said OK no talking today.

Anyway, on to the caves instead of the touts...

These caves were dug out around 1000AD, there are over 30 of them and they're divided in to Hindi and Budhist and Jain caves. I rode up to the Jain caves first

Carved out of a cliff!

Inside one of the caves here.

Inside the big one. All this carved from the rock that was here.

Another cave nearby. This one was a bit more impressive.

Carving inside.

The columns left behind when they dug out the rest.

In the center of this cave.

Looking over to some of the others.

Then I rode back down to the main parking lot and visited the biggest of this group.

Yep, this one. They dug it out from the top leaving behind this temple in the middle.

Inside the big gate, this really does look like a Halo level... 

More of that temple in the center.

You can see how much rock they removed, and then created this space underneath.

More rock vs. temple.

After this cave it was too hot to walk around in my motorbike gear so I got back on the bike and headed through the wineries to Aurangabad. I found a decent place to stay at Shree Maya Hotel for 750Rs/night, this will be the cheapest place with air-conditioning that I found in India. After I checked in there was some brief heavy rain. Lucky I wasn't caught riding in that.

The next morning I checked out and headed up to...

Ajanta Caves

I packed up all my gear with the intention of staying near to the caves. However, once I got there I found this a little different to what I expected. As usual there is the Indian tradition of trying to extract as much money out of you as possible. You're directed to a parking area 4km away from the actual caves, to get into this area there is a 5Rs fee for the bike, and a 10Rs "Amenities Fee" (don't know what that one is for). Once I parked I had a few people come over and start watching me pack up everything on my bike, as is usual, but today I was annoyed with it so I told them they don't have to watch everything I do. One of the Indian guys spoke and then the rest left... Rare. This guy would keep asking random usual Indian questions and as I was leaving he would walk by me through all the shops you're forced to walk though when going to the bus to the caves. Of course, this guy turned out to own a shop that sold crystals... Urgh.

I found a quiet spot out the back of the shops where there wasn't much foot traffic and had a drink. All the while this guy was watching me, I think he was calling out to other touts to come over an harass me.

Then the next part of the Ajanta Caves money extraction. Once you get to the area where the bus leaves from they check you have the amenity fee ticket. Then you go line up for the bus. After a half hour wait in the sun it was my turn to get on the bus, and wouldn't you know it, a 12Rs one way fee... And at the other end near the caves you pay for the actual world heritage ticket to get in, another 250Rs for a foreigner. I got another drink at the restaurant here (overpriced by 10Rs compared to the other side of the bus journey) before heading over to the caves.

And here are some. In this bend in the gorge they've carved these caves into the cliffs in 1 BC.  Some of them were made slightly after this, but the one in the middle is apparently the oldest.

Inside cave number 1, the painted ceiling.

The painted walls and the colums inside. Also the pigment safe lighting, no flash is allowed in here, yet people still do it.

The back of cave 1.

Another wider view.

More painting.

This is cave number 2 I think. Each of the caves with a sign out the front you have to remove your shoes for. I was wearing my motorbike boots which are not the best for taking on an off. I elected to skip some of the caves that required it.

Painting on the outside of cave number 2.

Carvings on the inside.

The back area of this cave. Which probably has a proper name but I'm sticking with back area for now.

Another of the caves along the way.

Inside a smaller cave, shoes allowed.

One of the walls in the smaller cave.

This one has a window!

Inside, it was big. All this was cut into the cliff 2012+ years ago...

Suspiciously old elephant, and a suspiciously new elephant... 

Another view looking back out from half way.

The walkway along the caves. There are signs up everywhere to say walk on the cave side of the path in the monsoons...

I wasn't allowed in this one with shoes, got this from the door.

Smaller cave insides.

Another no shoe cave.

This one was unfinished. That's how they do it all then.

And the last one in this set of caves, the biggest!

Insides.

Just on the sides of those columns.

A 360degree panorama of the area.

And that was it for the caves, buy this time the motorbike gear I was wearing was completely soaked and it wasn't raining... I headed back towards the bus so I can get back to my bike (another 12Rs trip).

When I was back at the carpark I noticed some grey clouds approaching. I figured now that I've seen the caves there's no point staying here, costs too much to get into it anyway. I headed back to Aurangubad back to the same cheap hotel and beat the rain by about twenty minutes.

Places I've been in the past 3 days

A huge load of pics to go through! Let's start.... HERE:

Boh Tea Estate, Cameron Highlands

I rode up the hill to try some of the local tea. And here's what I saw:

One of the 8 local varieties you could try, then there's all the others with non-tea flavors added too. It was a fine cup of tea this one.

Tea!

A close up of the tea on the hills.

The non-closeup version.

After the Cameron Highlands it was time to head down into the heat again and visit Ipoh for a few days. The road down the mountain is quite windy, and narrow... And in typical Malay fashion there are drivers trying to speed down and overtake around corners. It's like what the Black Spur in Melbourne was a few years ago, but with cars.

Lots of jungle over the edge of the road.

These little huts are everywhere along the side of the road. And of course, most of them have people trying to sell you stuff in them.

Lata Iskandar

These are some waterfalls I didn't expect on the way.

The bottom of the falls

The waterfall!

Oh right. Yes. Of course, if you absolutely need that giant stuffed pencil toy, you can buy it here, next to the waterfall...

Kek Look Tong

Kek Look Tong is a buddist temple built in a cave here in Ipoh.

This is the entrance to the templ... Hey what's that symbol on the ground! It's the symbol for luck, why, what did you think it was?

I don't know my buddism very well, so I don't know who these three are.

Well I recognize this guy.

Some cave formations.

Don't photograph the monkies!

The Tortoise pond! There were hundreds of the things in there!

It started to rain on me here so I thought it best to go find the hotel. Quickly.


Kellie's Castle

It's hard to find this place, there's no real directions anywhere. I found a website that had a hand drawn map, so I copied that down and set out, only, there is a new road where one on the map is supposed to end, so I got slightly lost. There's only one road sign pointing to this place, but it's not the last turn you need to make either.

Anyway, this was being built by a scot called, Kellie, who died while he was overseas collecting things for the place, and so the building was never finished.

This is the castle. The tower on the left has rooms for guests.

This is the cellar. There was a Tunnel here that lead to a temple somewhere. The tunnel has been boarded up though :(

The Altar

There are info cards all over the place, the one here said that the ghost of Kellie walks up and down here... There was another that said his 6 year old daughter was once seen walking out of her room...

Creepy stairway

This is an escape stairway! Each of the bedrooms had one.

Son's room.

Closet

This was for the elevator. One of the things Kellie was acquiring overseas, when he died.

Bats!

You can get out on the roof. The raised part is meant to be a miniature tennis court

This was his old house, in use while the castle was being built. It was destroyed in WW2 apparently. 

Some of the imported Italian marble in the old house.

Gua Tempurung

This cave is mentioned in all the local tourist information, a must see, while in Ipoh. This cave has four large chambers to look through, however, you have to have a guide. And to get further than the first chamber you need to have a minimum of 5 people. Great. I hung around for a while to see if anyone else was going to turn up, but no one did. So I paid to go look at the first chamber only. The guides here are useless, they take their torch and shine it at different rocks and say things like "This one looks like a dolphin, that one like a crocodile, there's a mans face...". The only informative thing he did was shine it at one rock and said it was marble, the rest of the cave was limestone. I mostly ignored him and took photos.

This was just inside the cave, looking back out. 

The big chamber. Apparently 120m tall. The big formation on the right is called the flowerstone.

Oh I lie, he told me about this... Water has eroded this channel into the stone.

Looking down into the main chamber.

I could hear thunder while I was in the cave, and went we got back out it was raining quite heavy. I waited round for an hour or so while lightning hit the field nearby and then once the rain eased up a little I decided to just get wet and go.

So now that everything is wet, I've booked in to the hotel for another night to let everything dry out, and because they told me I could get laundry done today, but apparently it was too late to do it and get it back before tomorrow afternoon... Great. The day after tomorrow I'll head back down to KL to get my bike serviced, then speed north so I can cross the boarder into Thailand.

Ipoh.