Great flight and transfer from Mumbai. Aurangabad is a city surrounded by countryside and hills. The main reason for visiting is to explore the Ellora cave temples. These are magnificent temples hewn out of the rock face. There are 34 and they date from 500-1100AD. The oldest are Buddhist, then the Hindu, and the newest are Jain. It is difficult to get your head round as the scales are huge and intricacies are outstanding. The photos don't really do them justice. After the caves we also visited an ancient walled village, a tomb and a silk weaving company. The weaving is by hand to produce the most beautiful and expensive sari’s. The area is famous for these fabrics.
Next day up and out early to avoid the heat, it is a lot hotter here than Mumbai. We made the 600ft climb up to a hill fort. This was really great fun as you had to find your way through dark tunnels full of bats to get to the top. Fortunately we had a torch and there weren't any guards shooting at us, pouring hot oil on us or blowing in toxic gasses at us! These were defensive tunnels to protect against attack and these were some of the methods to prevent invasion. Great views from the top. Met lots of lovely local people on our way down and had many photos taken with them. I have realised that foreign people don't flock around Madonna when she visits their countries just because she is Madonna, it's because she's white! #feelinglikemadonna We also took lots of photos of the very lovely people including a number of school trips! Also visited the 'poor mans Taj Mahal'. So called because it is smaller and not fully made of marble. I was very impressed though, I think you'll agree when you see the photos.
All this has been fantastic but a special mention goes to the hotel restaurant which was food heaven. Everything we ate was exceptional, even better than the 'best curry ever' in Mumbai!! It was worth coming to Aurangabad just for the food. They also served Indian whisky which was delicious. We are leaving Aurangabad tonight on an overnight sleeper train to Nagpur and then onto a nature reserve to safari. Don't worry if you don't hear from me for a while it is pretty remote and we might not have internet. Namaste from India, love Dawn and Mark xx
