Vikarabad, Aurangabad, Ellora, Ajanta

Vikarabad

This may end up being the longest blog entry I've written to this point, so sit back, relax, and get ready to scroll down the page at your leisure.

Your protagonist left you last in Vikarabad, the anti-tourist trap, about to go to his first Indian movie (okay, I'm done with the third person now). I walked over to the cinema and took a seat on the wall to the street. There were a whole bunch of Indian guys (and a handful of women) that were waiting outside to buy tickets to the movie. They stared, and stared (of course), then the bravest one came over to ask where I was from and my name. By the time I replied there was a semi-circle four people thick all around me (approximate radius of 2 meters; yeah, I went there). I noticed they were now selling tickets (30 rupees, about 60 cents), so I walked that
way (with the semi-circle parting for me with no problems) and got my ticket.

I made my way inside and they asked to check my bag. Well I had all my stuff with me since I didn't have a hotel, so they began with my "satchel", with many, many, onlookers, then started with my backpack. It pretty much overwhelmed them and they gave up within a couple of minutes, but first about 30 people got a decent look at all my possessions.

The movie started late (because it's India), and it turned out to be the Indian movie, not 2012. It was entirely in Telugu, the most common language there, although it was pretty easy to follow the plot: boy meets girl, gets motorcycle to impress her, gets girl, becomes entangled with local mob, then beats them up repeatedly despite the fact that he's tiny, works as a repo guy for the bank and as far as I can tell has no martial arts training. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm usually a bit of a movie snob, but being in the theater made it too much fun not to like. When the girl first appeared on screen a bunch of guys whistled and yelled. Then when she would give the hero a little look or something they would all repeat. When they finally kissed the place went crazy with whistling and cheering. It was a good time.

After the movie I was the star of a little photo shoot in the lobby. One guy asked to take a picture with me, then all the sudden there were about ten guys taking pictures of each other with me, rotating in out and snapping away with their phones. They asked if I spoke Telugu. I said no. They asked how I could understand the movie, and I said I couldn't. I thought they were looking at me funny before, but after that I may as well have had a third eye.

I got some food (delicious bhaji puri, or fried bread with a rich curry, and a couple of samosas), attempted to book a hotel online in Delhi (maybe a success, I'm not yet sure), and headed to the train station. After a couple of hours I had talked to a few sets of people and my train arrived.

Aurangabad

I arrived in Aurangabad at about 6am. Unfortunately the train was scheduled for a 4:30am arrival, so I was up at 4:15, and looking for the station for nearly two hours. Anyway, I went looking for hotels, only to find the first several I found already full. I eventually made it to one a little thats a little pricier than I hoped, but nice.

From Aurangabad several companies run tours to the Ellora caves, the attractions around Aurangabad, and the Ajanta caves. The guide book recommends taking extra time to see them because the tours are rushed, but I don't have that luxury, so I took the tours.

First day: Fort/Ellora caves/Mini-Taj/Silk emporium/Water mill

The tour left at 9:30am bound for the local fort. It was a very cool fort, one of the oldest in India at about 1200 years old. They carved most of it straight out of the mountain, using the rock to make buildings and a wall around the bottom of the hill. We did the standard tour thing until we got past the moat to the labyrinth. Basically it's a dark set of hallways designed to confused intruders. That's where it got really interesting. The guy working there had a traditional torch, just a large stick soaked in oil. He lit it up and we followed him in through the labyrinth. It was dark, smelled terrible and was absolutely covered with bats. The bat cave in Nepal has nothing on this. They were flying all over, making all sorts of crazy noises, and stinking up the joint. It was fantastic.

From there I grabbed some sugar cane juice (tasty and not as sweet as you might think) and we headed to the Ellora caves. The caves were carved starting in the 7th century or so, Buddhist at first, then Hindu, then Jain. They carved massive caves, some taking as many as 150 years, straight into the rock, starting at the front or in some cases the top and working their way down. They were absolutely stunning.

First we went to the Buddhist ones, which were very cool, and one had some great acoustics, which the guide sang Buddhist chants in, which was great. Next we went to a Hindu one. It's the largest monolithic stone structure on Earth (bigger than Petra and any Mayan ones as well as any others). It's unreal, just a huge temple carved into the mountain, complete with statues covering many of the walls.

The last of the caves we visited was a Jain cave. It was more detailed, carved later than the others, and was pretty impressive, although after the Hindu one it wasn't as crazy. There are over 30 caves but we only had time for four of them (two Buddhist, one of each of the other two), which was a little disappointing, but they showed us the best ones. After a lunch in which I was the only tourist eating Indian style (with their hand, not utensils), we went to Ellora town.

The town of Ellora is as old as the caves and has a very sacred temple. We went inside and came to the sanctum. There was a sign of what to do and the first thing was for men to remove their upper clothes. I reread it a couple times, took off my shirt and went it. Many of the other tourists were more hesitant than I. It was an interesting and memorable couple of minutes, standing there shirtless with a couple of Indian men while they made their offerings.

After that we went to what they call the "Mini-Taj Mahal". Basically the Taj guy's grandson built it to honor his mother as her tomb. The problem is it's modeled after the Taj, but smaller and after one ring of marble on the bottom, made of stone with plaster. One of the amazing parts about the real thing when you're there is the way the light hits the pure white, almost translucent marble, but this one doesn't have that. This led me to coin it the "Ghetto Mahal". It's really not even worth seeing unless you're already in Aurangabad.

We also stopped at a silk emporium to try to sell us stuff (typical tour trick), but it was uneventful.

The last stop was an old water mill, which ran using underground ancient pipes coming into the city. It was only slightly better than the silk emporium.

For dinner I went down the street and ate with an English girl I met on the tour. We were soon joined by a couple of Indian men. One was clearly drunk. It turned out it was his birthday, but he was also a local politician. I should have known! We ended up having only tea with them, then saying we were going for a walk and meeting them later. They really wanted to come, but we walked away eventually. We went to a restaurant and asked what they had available. The manager told us to come over to him and then recommended we go somewhere else. I'm not sure why they didn't want to serve us, but it was a first for me (that I can remember) being turned away like that for no reason.

We eventually came back and ate (after another encounter with the drunk politician), including dessert of falooda (or faludha, depending on where you look on the menu). It was a combination of a milkshake and a scoop of ice cream, which topping including syrups, nuts, dried fruit, and noodles. Yes, noodles. It wasn't bad, but it was a little odd.

Well by the end of all that I was exhausted, and went to bed in order to get up early to catch the 8:30am tour to the Ajanta caves. The Ellora caves were a highlight, not just of the day, but of the whole trip. To think people carved them with chisel and hammer over a thousand years ago, and they are still there like the day they were carved is just incredible. Also the bats and torch in the fort was pretty cool.

Today I visited the Ajanta caves, but I'll write about it tomorrow before I leave for Delhi.