I had a nice dinner after writing yesterday at the Silver Palace restaurant next door to my hotel and retired for what I had expected to be an early night. As it turned out on flicked on the little TV in the room and there was an English movie channel showing "Batman Begins" which I sat up and watched. I had set my alarm for 6:30 for an early start, but was woken at 4:00 by an alarm in the neighbours room and didn't get back to sleep.
At 7:00 I was on the local bus heading south. I "hooked up" with the other foreigners from my hotel who were all headed to the same place. We had an Indian style breakfast Aloo Parantha (?)at a local stand the got the connecting "Greenline" bus to the Caves at Ajanta. The caves are actually man made Buddhist temples that were dug into the stone over 800 years from around 200BC to 600AD. After that as the Buddhists moved out of India and headed North they were "forgotten" and grew over until the mid 1800's when an English hunter was chasing a Tiger and it dissappeared into one. There are about 26 caves at various stages of completion and in various stages of disrepair.
We shared the cost of a guide who was very informative and interesting. Originally we had balked at the cost and commenced looking through ourselves but it became clear quite quickly that the experience would be greatly enhanced by knowing more about what we were looking at. There are many statues and the remains of some paintings. The guide explained the religious stories that the paintings were trying to tell as well as pointing out the development of the artisans skills.
There were surprisingly few western travellers there - though plenty of Indians. It seemed especially popular with school groups. In a reversal - it was funny that the Indians took particular interest in the Norwegian guy we were with - he is tall and blonde with dreadlocks - many of them asking to have their photo taken with him. At one stage a whole tour group of about 20 had him in the centre of their group photo.
In the afternoon I took the local bus on to Aurangebad. This was a crowded bumpy three hour trip and passed fairly uneventfully. I was reading the Flaubert book. It was not until a bunch of boys who got on the bus to try to sell chips and drinks etc seemed to pay particular interest in it, crowding around me that I noticed that the topless dancers on the conver may offend some and excite others. The book is more than just letters to his mother - there are also letters to his friends and excerpts from his journal with some rather "interesting" observations and activities that I hadn't expected.
