Dan's Adventure

At 9am I was standing waiting on the boat to Elephanta on the first dock. There were several boats there, all empty, and looking like they were going nowhere. I could see full boats leaving from the other docks and I immediately regretted my decision to save 20 rupees by buying an economy ticket. The economy boats don’t sail by a timetable like the deluxe ones do, they wait until they are full. It was almost 10am when the first economy boat finally set off on the hour long trip to Elephanta.

Elephanta is an island in the Arabian sea, situated just outside Mumbai harbour. The reason that hundreds of boats full of tourists visit it every day is because of the Hindu temple complex that are carved out of the rock at the top of the hill. The temple complex consists of three main caves which date back to the 9th through to 13th centuries, and is said to be the abode of the Hindu god, Shiva. Many sculptures of Shiva are contained within the caves.

The caves at Elephanta are not the only caves in the Maharashta of India. There are several sites containing Hindu, Buddhist and Jain caves, the most impressive of which are at Ellora. I made my way to Aurangabad to take a bus tour to the local sites including a visit to Ellora. The bus tour leaves from the MTDC holiday resort every day except Tuesdays when the caves are closed at 9.30am. It costs 230 rupees, with entry to each of the sites visited costing extra. If you aren’t Indian these costs will add up as all foreigners need to pay a tourist tax at each site making the entry fee be at least 10 times as much as it is for Indians.

Ellora is home to 34 caves stretched over several kilometres of hillside, 12 Buddhist, 17 Hindu and 5 Jain. The Kailasa Temple, dedicated to Shiva, is without doubt the most impressive. Cut out of the rock from top to bottom, it took 150 years to complete! The entire collection of caves spans several kilometres across the hillside, some more impressive than others and a few containing paintings as well as sculptures.

I met Shrikant on the trip to Ellora who insisted on buying me lunch and invited me to join himself and his friends at a party that evening, the party didn’t end up happening but it was very kind of them to invite me. I have found Indians to generally be very friendly and welcoming, often going out of their way to help, particularly at train stations when they can see that I am having difficulty in finding the correct platform as signs are rarely in English outside of major cities.

Unfortunately my pictures from Ellora were lost due to a fault on my memory card, so the pictures contained in this post are from Elephanta. I didn’t lose any others as I make a point of backing up my photos each night.