Carvings, Mamalapuram.

January 13-19 Bangolore , Mahabalipuram, Chennai
      After overnighting in a Bangalore hotel we caught an 8:00am train to Chennai. It was a very bearable 6 hour trip to Chennai helped along by interesting scenery and food. The landscape varied between rural, small towns and small cities; dry wasteland, rocky hills and agricultural land.  We arrived in Chennai about 2:30 and we could already tell we’re in the south; it’s much warmer.  Got a taxi to the long distance bus station (as opposed to the bus station for the city busses) about 7km away.  On the way the taxi driver tried to talk us into having him drive us to our destination; “Where you go” “ Mahabalipuram or Pondicherry?” and how much more convenient it would be and “okay I take you there?” I can understand people wanting to make a living and offering their services.  But some salespeople/ taxi drivers/ travel agents etc. can get very annoying with their sales pitch.

Monolithic temple in Mamalapuram.

Indian dance.

The church on St. Thomas's Mount.

Mom sharing.

Family picture.

North Indian Bamboo dancers.

Fishing boat, Mamalapuram.

The temple at dawn.

 After multiple no’s and refusing to divulge our destination, we finally made it to the bus station.  By 3:48 we had seats on a state bus to the coastal town of Mahabalipuram.  Seeing it was a Saturday afternoon of a 3 day holiday weekend, we felt fortunate to even get on a bus to say nothing of getting seats.  And getting big backpacks on as well can be challenging on the more local type busses.  By the end of the ride there were many people standing in the aisles.  Fortunately it wasn’t extremely hot and we arrived about 6:00, got a room with 4 beds in a budget priced hotel that overlooked a swimming pool.  (A lot of budget hotels don’t have pools- some even have shared bathrooms) This became our base for the next few days.  Mahabalipuram  is a resort town south of Chennai and also a world heritage site for its rock carvings, old stone Hindu temple overlooking the beach and other sites.  It’s a town of 13,000 or so and one section is mostly Indian locals and a pocket of hotels (a variety of budget and expensive) restaurants and souvenir stores/shops/stalls. We spent a good deal of time just hanging out.  One day we spent a few hours walking around 2 of the most important of the rock sites; the ancient Hindu Shore Temple and the Five Rathas. Other activities include eating, walking the beach at sunrise, walking the town looking for flipflops/snacks/fruit stalls, eating, swimming in the swimming pool and doing some homeschool and did I mention eating?  There was also the yearly dance festival going on while we were there so we went 2 evening performances of traditional Indian dancing. One afternoon we left most of our stuff in the hotel and caught a bus back to Chennai to visit with Jerry Phabhakaran, our exchange student from last year.
 Chennai is the fourth largest city in India and the capital of Tamil Nadu state.  Tamil Nadu is in the south eastern end of the country and is quite different from the north of India.  Their language of Tamil is comes from an old Dravidian based language, which is not related to Hindi. (India has something like 28 major languages.  English is the common language people use between all of the various ones, but not everyone knows it.  For example signs and announcements at Railway Stations are in the locally used language(s) and English-very handy for us) 
     Jerry  gave us the Chennai Tour.  He lives in a section of Chennai called St. Thomas Mount.  There is a hill nearby where the disciple Thomas was martyred.  He had come to this part of India after leaving Jerusalem and preached here.  The following day Jerry took us to the Snake Park (an exhibit of various reptiles and amphibians including snakes, frogs, crocodiles, etc;  the National Museum which had art, history, geology, fauna and other exhibits, and finally to the beach that extends about 50km along Chennai and onwards.  It is called Marina Beach and is one of the places to go to.  January 17th, the day we spent with Jerry happened to be a holiday-Farmers Day and there were crowds all through the city, but the beach was the most popular spot to be.  We estimated that there had to be 300,000 people near the city of Chennai section.  It was like a carnival.  There were food booths and kiosks set, hucksters of cotton candy, toys, carnival games, hand turned merry go rounds and other like rides, and so on and so on. It was unbelievable.  The only thing you didn’t see was people in the water or sun bathing. The police had actually roped off the last 20 feet of the beach down to the water for safety reasons.  They didn’t have nearly any lifeguards so they denied access rather than have people trampled or not able to aid those who were in the water and in trouble (as if they could even keep track of it with those numbers!) Jerry also pointed out his school and church though we didn’t stop at either one.

              

The beach in Chennai.

  The highlight of our visit was our evening with his family.  One of his aunties hosted us and about 20 other assorted aunties, uncles, cousins, grammy, and great aunts and his mom, Christina. The evening started with his mom and 2 aunties escorting me into a bedroom and outfitting me into a saree.  It was quite the experience to be wrapped into one and it was lovely-I felt quite pampered.  Steve was dressed into a dhoti.  They had some time of hymn singing and prayer.  They asked me to share something so I tried to sing one of our Sunday School songs and then shared a couple of passages from

Sam in a motor rikshaw, Chennai

Philippians and James and gave a bit of a testimony on what they meant to me in relationship to this trip.  This was followed by one of his aunties giving a testimony and praising God for healing her in a health issue the previous week. We happened to visit on Sam’s 10th birthday (Jan 16) and they sang Happy Birthday, had cake for him (first smearing some on his face) setting off a confetti bomb and gifting him with a shirt.   According to their tradition he had to first serve a slice of cake to his brothers (Ben and Jerry) and to his parents before eating his own. It was a truly joyous wonderful evening and so incredible to be surrounded by a wonderful group of loving family.  We stayed at his Aunties house.  One of his uncles is a photographer who busily took photos on both his camera and ours so we have some wonderful photos of all of them and various groupings. Thank you, thank you, thank you Jerry and the rest of your family.
     The following afternoon we headed back to the beach community and hung out for another couple of days. On the 19th we left middle of the afternoon and made our way back to Chennai and had supper with Jerry and his mom Christina at their house.  She made an incredible biryani and payasam for dessert.  They then arranged a taxi for us and with parting hugs we made our way to the Railway Station for our 11:30pm departure for Kolkota.  We had confirmed bookings for 4 berths but until we arrived we weren’t sure if they were all in the same coach.  In answer to prayer we all ended up in the same coach but our berths were not all together.  29 Hours later at 4:10 in the morning we found ourselves in Kolkata after traversing nearly 2/3 of the east coast of India by rail.

Martha

Impressions of southern India:
Fewer cows, slightly cleaner appearing in the streets, better roads, more evidence of Protestant and Catholic churches, hotter and drier.

The original rikshaw.

A game of cricket in the park.

 January 21-25 Kolkata India
     We pulled into platform 23 of Kolkata’s main Railway Station of Howrah at 4:15am. Railroads are a huge part of India’s transportation system and this is one of the major stations and therefor very busy.  There were already lots of people up and about at the station; passengers coming and going, cleaning people, porters, and kiosk people running their snack shops.  However busy it was there, we didn’t feel we would be very successful looking for a hotel at that hour so we just hung  out for a couple of hours til daylight and caught a taxi to cross the Hooghly River into Kolkata proper.
   Several of the hotels we checked were full and we finally ended up at the Chowringee YMCA, a rather cavernous building of lackluster care both in and out.  It was clean, but didn’t seem to have had much TLC in the last few years.  We had a large family room with 3 beds and its own bathroom.  We pushed 2 of the beds together and Steve, Sam and I fit on that and Ben had his own.  We are back in the north so we needed blankets at night and did not need to run the fans.

The Victoria monument, Kolkata.

Street food, Kolkata.

 Kolkata is the third largest of India’s cities with a population of over 14 million in   metropolitan area.  It is the capital of West Bengal and  the main languages are Bengal and English.  I have given up at this point learning any more in expressions in the language where we are and am relying on English.
      We spent most of the first day relaxing, checking out the neighborhood and finding a place to eat.  Steve had spent some time in this city, in this neighborhood about 30 years ago and so he was quite happy to roam around and strike up conversations with the street people and kids, the rickshaw drivers and the people running little food stalls.  During our 4 days here we spent a few hours on the Maidan one afternoon.  It is a huge park where people go to do park things!  We were there on a Sunday afternoon and so there were a lot of people there flying kites, friends sitting together talking, and there were lots of cricket games.  In the immediate vicinity alone we counted 15 and those ranged from the rag tag pickup games with ids of varying abilities to the older men in their white pants and shirts who take it pretty seriously.  Of course going and hanging out in the park is like being in a fishbowl as we were pretty much the only foreigners there and the object of some curiosity.  The third day we took a rickshaw (the human powered kind) to Mother Theresa’ Missionaries of Charity Mother House.  This was her headquarters for many years; where she lived and organized her work.  It is still a working convent but also has her tomb, a museum of her life and work, and her room has been preserved with her bed and writing table.  It was all very interesting and thought provoking as she dedicated her life to working with the poorest of the poor (of which we’ve seen innumerable examples) and makes me think about how could I do things differently here.  We are approached several times a day by people with their hands out; women carrying babies, semi toothless old ladies, men on the sidewalk bouncing coins in a metal cup, and 4, 5 and 6 year olds toting baby siblings or hauling toddlers along; and it’s impossible to give to all of them.  My conscience pricks me with the knowledge that I have enough money to be here feeding myself at a fraction of what it would cost in the US and these folks (many of whom) have legitimate needs.  I feel hardened by it all.  Sorry about that digression.  Steve was hoping to spend a day volunteering with them but he was hit with a flu type thing the following day.  The boys and I let him get some rest and walked to the Victoria Memorial and wandered through the gardens and galleries of art exhibits and historical artifacts.  I found the gallery on the history of Kolkata very interesting but involved copious amounts of written placard that would have taken 3 or 4 hours to digest and while I might of devoted the time to it, I was facing a mutiny from my companions.  I contented myself with a brief skim of as much as I could.
     Impressions of Kolkata: it’s a huge city and the roads seemed quite good.  Traffic was pretty much standard, a weaving, furiously honking race through the streets.  Many of the buildings seem to to suffer from lack of care; muchly faded paint, crumbling cement, shutters hanging askew.  But the people seemed friendly and we got to recognize street people on Sudder Street as we wandered back and forth to the restaurant.  One lady let me hold her 3 week old baby that had been born under a tarp on the sidewalk.  Kids would come up and hold our hands and yell “hello” in English.  Steve went out a couple of mornings to chronicle their lives with his camera.  The waiters in the restaurant got to guess our meal choices we were there so much.  Travelling with children, especially one the age of Sam opens people up to us.  People often just come up to touch him; pat him on the shoulder or arm, and I can’t count the number of times people would come up and want to have their photo taken with him on their cell phones.  He said he should start asking them to pay for the privilege!
     So this ended our time in India.  The next morning (Sam was now not feeling well and Steve had not really recovered) we caught a taxi to the Kolkata International airport and at 12:30pm we left for the next leg of our trip.  We arrived in Bangkok Thailand 2 1/2 hours and a whole different culture later.  We have spent our 3 days here getting visas and airline tickets and US dollars for our trip to Myanmar.  We leave tomorrow (1/29) and are planning on travelling lighter by leaving some of our things in storage at the hotel. Myanmar has a restrictive government and sometimes there is internet access and sometimes there isn’t.  It may be a couple of weeks before we can update you on that part of our adventures!  

Martha

Aurangabad, Ooty and Bangalore

The Maharaja's Palace in Myesore.

Tea grows in a temperate climate at about 6,000 feet elevation

Ladies clip the top leaves and put them in bags.  These plants are 60 years old.

Tea plants need some shade

The leaves are taken to a factory where they are partially dried for 12-14 hours.

The leaves are ground up

They are put on the floor for one hour's fermenting

The powder is then baked to dry it.  It is then sifted to take out the big pieces, and packed to sell.

 By Sam, on his birthday.

Fruit stand, Ooty.

Jan 8 - 13   Aurangabad-Ooty-Bangalore
January 8
We got up at 3 a.m. packed, and walked the dark, deadly silent, deserted streets the 1/2 mile to the railrosd station.  There were many people sleeping on the ground outside the station, and even more sleeping inside the station on the floor.  Caught the 4:30 train and climbed into bed.   Slept??? till about 7, got up and spent a looooong day on the train.  The land wasvery  dry. Lots of dead grassy open space, with a few small green trees. Every now and then there were harvested fields scattered with big,golden, conical stacks of corn stalks.  Where the wells had not yet gone dry, there were small fields of onions, garlic and cotton.  As we passed from Maharashtra State across the corner of Karnataka and ito Andhara Pradesh, there were more rivers and lakes, and many people were planting rice.  We got off the train in Segundarabad and hung out at the station for 4 hours waiting for our next train.  We calculated that approximately half the population of India must be here at the train station with us.  Never seen such mobs!!

Bottanical Gardens, Ooty

Tea plantation in the fog, Ooty.

Back on the  train for Bangalore.  Ben and I were in 3d class, (6 per cubicle), and about 12 cars from Martha and Sam.  Arrved at our cubicle to find that there were already 9  people in it.  They turned out to be pat of a group of 1,000 people from Himachal Pradesh in northern India travelling to do a workshop in Bangalore.  They were part of an NGO called The Art of Living" started by the famous sitar player, Ravi Shankar.  From what I could gather, the organization is all about living, loving and serving joyfully, and the members do lots of volunteer social work.  What an amazing group of positive, happy people to have to hang out in crowded quarters with!  We started off  our time with them singing Hindu worship songs for about an hour, then got into deep discussions on a dozen or more  fascinatingly different subjects.  Crashed about 10:30.

January 9 
Up and off the train at 7:30 a.m. We went to a tavel agent near the station and booked a private car with driver!  Very unlike us, but after 25 hours of  trains and stations, why not?  We have the car and driver for 5 days.  He will drive us the 7 hours to Ooty, be available for us for the 3 days there to take us wherever we like, then take us back to Bangalore to catch the train to travel to the southeast coastal town of Mahabalipuram.  A car and driver for 5 days and 5 or 600 miles for $220-not bad.  We passed through Mutamali National Park on the way and saw elephants, wild boar, deer and lots of monkeys.
Arrived at our destination, Ughadamandalam, better known as Ooty, at sunset.  Ooty was set up by the British as a "Hill Station", a retreat town 6,000 feet up in the hills, and a great place to get away from the scorching summer heat of the lowands.  It is now a popular tourist destination for Indians, as well as a tea growing area. 

Ben and gum tree.

January 10
Guess what?  We are north of the equator, so it is winter here, and this morning the ground was white with frost!  Even  going to bed fully dressed and under a ton of blankets isn't quite warm enough for me.  No pace is heated, but when the sun shines, usually between  8 and noon,  just standing in the sunshine feels sooo good! In 3 days, we will be complaining about the  heat!  We drove up to the Dolphin's Nose this morning, an incredible viewpoint high up in the hills. The clouds were racing up the hillsides all around us, creating some of te most dramatic views.  Lots of monkeys with dorky hairstyles hanging around.  There were ladies clipping tea leaves in the nearby fields.  We visited a tea processing plant on the way back to the hotel.  Sam will be telling you all about it soon. 
Weare slowing right down to Indian speed!  We drove about 25 miles and made  two stops plus lunch, left at 9 a.m. and didn't arrive home until 3:30 p.m..  Wow!
We ate "western"  at a pretty fancy restaurant. Had a whole rotissarized chicken, then stopped for a couple pounds of chocolate on the way home.

Rural Indian school  bus

January 11
We left at 8 this morning, stopped for breakfast, then went to the highest point in southern India, 8,600 feet above sea level.  Good views, but not spectacular.
 I forgot to mention yesterday's morning snack, fresh corn off the cob (probably taken off before cooking, as the kernels were whole), with masala spices, (green cardomum,cinnamon, ginger, cloves and a bit of cayenne pepper) plus lime juice,butter and salt.  It was totally and awesomely delicious!

Hindu temple

 January 12
The ground was white with frost again this morning.  We went to the Tribal Museum this morning.It was pretty interesting. It looked desreted when we arrived, but a man appeared from somewhere, let us in, and gave us a great tour.  It was all about the indigenous tribal people of the Nilgiri Hills and had lots of old artifacts, photos and paintings. Our guide let us pick up things, put on stuff and play some of the musical instruments, something that is rarely possible in most such museums.  The stuffed animals, especially the snake with plastic scarf and the turkey and mongoose from hell could use some help.

Mongoose from hell

January 13
We retraced our route to Bangalore.  It was nice to get back down out of the hills to "warm country" again.  We stopped in Matamali Natonal Park for a bit to watch  a herd of tamed elephants.  We also saw lots of wild deer, boar and of course, monkeys.

Sam wearing the "original" umbrella, Tribal Museum

 We stopped at Mysore Palace, palace of the former Maharaja.  It was magnificent, all 7.4 acres of INSIDE floor space-approximately 35,000 square feet.  Quite a comfy little place for a family of 5.  The walls were covered with huge, very detailed paintings, the halls were lined with 3 foot diameter 30 feet high intricately designed, brightly colored pillars.  Rooms were the size of a basketball gym, but with 60 foot high  stain glass covered domes.  Some of the items used by the Maharaja were on display, which included the gold throne in a large gold box? that was strappd on the back of his elephant and used for, duh.......trips down to the local store for  cigarettes??  As we wandered through the cavernous hallways and the rooms big enough for our house to fit in, I just kept thinking, "Why?" and I wondered how many thousands of people lived their whole lives in the squalor so that this family could live such an almost unimaginably wealthy  lifestyle.

Our extended family

Mudumali National Park

Turkey-of-the living-dead

Our room at the YWCA, Ooty.

Typical rural road scene.

Fun In (with) The Sun

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January 1
New Years day, and the first rainy day of the trip.  Actually we haven't even had as much as a single small shower.  Slogged out through the muddy, yucky alleyways to eat and buy train food. A cold wind blew all day, so we pretty much just huddled around in our room.
Caught the train at 5:30.  3rd class sleeper this time= 4-6 people per cubicle.  One of our passengermates hung out in another cubicle till bedtime, the other was a young software who spokeEnglish.  Made it really nice.

Outdoor kitchen.

 January 2
It was a fairly pleasant night.  The day was not so interesting, as the window in our cubicle was smashed , but not broken out safety glass, so the view wasn't great.   Got off at Jalgoan and caught a local bus to Ajanta Caves.  We are in Maharastra State where they speak Urdu.  It appears to be a more prosperous state, as the roads are really nice andnearly pothole-free.  Makes bus riding almost pleasant!  Got driopped off at the cave entrance road and caught a motoeickshaw to look for a room in one of the 3 hotels in the small town of Fardapor.  It is India;s holiday season, and on top of that there are about 500 monks passing through on pilgrimage, AND a crew is here from Bollywood shooting a film, so there were no rooms available till the last stop at a pretty nice hotel, where the manager took pity on us and offered us a "dorm" room all just for us at a discount-$36 a night, the most we have paid for a hotel yet. It was huge, brand new with bathroom and hot shower and had 8 beds!  The manager helped prepare the meals, and cooked us some most delicious Indian meals.

Grinding chilis with mortar and pestal.

 January 3
Up after a fine night's sleep and off for Ajanta Caves.  Martha will be adding a blog all about them soon.  Ben found a little cave to the side of one of the larger rooms that was amazing for chanting in.  Once we reached the exact tone, it only took a tiny bit of volume to keep it going.  At that point, my head felt like it had become one of those Tibetan singing bowls.  MOST INTENSE!  We continued chanting until the cave guard kicked us out. (We were only using it  for it's original purpose!).
 Arrived back at the  hotel in time to go for a walk out behind the hotel.  It is so nice to be out in the countryside!  It's not very green, mostly dead plants, all a golden brown with a few green trees and an occasional small irrigated field of onions.  The air is so fresh, yet warm during the day and cool in the morning and evening.  In our short walk, we were invited in for tea by one family, and sat outside talking with the husband at another while his wife cooked dinner on a little clay stove-mound fuelled by locally collected small sticks and brush.  Such friendly, gentle people!  So delightful after all that time in cities.

Cooking breakfast on the farm.

 January 4

Lazy morning.  We walked the roadsides, ditches,and plowed fields and picked up quartz crystals and agate.  The ground is literally covered with them!  Easy to limit what we collect, as we will have to carry it on our backs forthe next 3 months.  Met a Swedish couple that are staying at the hotel.  They helped a man buy a farm, and they took us out to see the farm.  The farm, actually run by a good sized extended family, raises mainly cotton.  They raise some lentils in between cotton  rows, and have small patches of  tomatoes, herbs and other vegetables or their own use.  They have very little rain during this time of year, and last week, the farmer's deep well that he uses for irrigating went dry.  His cotton crop has not ripened and is dying, so he is going to be losing the whole of his income for this year!

Goat drovers

 About 4 p.m. I wandered across the road into a Gypsy camp with some clothes that I didn't want any more and a bunch of food.  he camp consists of about 7 simple, little pup tents made of old pieces of plastic tarp.  The women and  older girls were prearing supper in small mud "Fireplaces" using old sticks and brush as fuel.  Chicken parts soup and chapattis seemed to be the "special of the day".  Two men sitting on  tarp invited me to sit down with them. The communication wasn't.  We just sat and stared at one another, mumbling back and forth foreign words that neither understood.  I thou.ght about our rock shop owner friend who had tried to sell us some stones.  I felt bad because he put a lot of energy into helping us, and we never did anything for him in return.  I thought "If only he were here now, I would pay him to translate for me. I really want to know about them".   30 seconds later, he drove up on his motorcycle!!These people spend all but the monsoon season roaming.  Only one man has a job.  He does piercings.  The rest subside on the normal Gypsy occupation of thievery.  They all have decent clothing, blankets for cold nights, cooking utensils, and a few bowls.   Firewood is collected sticks and  old pieces of discarded wood.  Water comes from a nearby public tap.  Stoves are like tiny fireplaces made of mud. They allowed me to take lots of pictures. We all watched the big red sun set, then I headed back to the hotel.

Hindu carvings at Ellora caves.

 January 5

Off to Aurangabad and Ellora Caves.  I got up early and went back to the farm.  One lady was making a design on the ground in front of her door with colored, powdered stone. Another was using a  rollong-pin-like grindstone on a flat stone to grind green hot peppers and peanuts.  The men were ll sitting around drinking tea.
We  hired a   car and driver to take us the 2 1/2 hours t Aurangabad and got us a hotl room with 2 bds, 2 mattresses for the dlor, and a flat screen tv!

Buddahs at Ellora caves

 January 6
Took a motorickshaw to the bus.  We lost our clutch cable on the way, but it only took the driver about 25 minutes toget a new one in and adjusted.(and he neverpulled off the pavement/travel lane to do the repair).  As the driver opened the engine compartment, Ben's comment :  "I've seen leaf blowers with bigger motors than that!"  See Martha's blog for info on the caves.
We got a ride home in a jeep-like thing with 10 little seats.   Bythe time we were a few miles down the road, there were 18 of us, including the driver, inside.  After this ride I will always have a soft spot in my heart for sardine.

Hindu carvings, Ellora

 January 1 -7
These are the days of the caves.  A 19 hour through the night train ride then 1 1/2 hours in a bus brought us to Fardapur in Maharashtra state. (About 8 hours east of Bombay by bus).  Fardapur is a small town and really our first opportunity to be in more of a town and village setting, which was a real treat. The two best known cave systems in the region are the Ajanta and Ellora caves, although there are others as well. Both are World Heritage site listed.  Ajanta caves are the older of the two dating from the second century BC to the sixth century AD.  They were all Buddist, either for use as monastaries or shrines.  They are in an isolated horseshoe shaped valley about  4km from Fardapur,30 of them in all.  They are an incredible set of "caves" in that they are not natural caves, they were all hewn out of solid rock. Most of them are not small either; you could easily fit hundreds of people in some of them.  Most had support columns, many with ornate carvings of a decorative nature.  The walls often had other carvings of stories relating to the Buddas life and other personages.  Some had the remains of frescos and paintings on the walls or ceilings or both.  In their heyday they must have been truly awesome, and although faded and in many places gone, they are still very awe inspiring.  There of course were many large Buddas ranging in size from 8 to 15 feet high.  We took our time meandering through the complex, not only because it was hot (in the 90's), but also because there were hordes of other people there including school groups. (It has been our experience that Indians don't work under a wait-your-turn line system; it is based on line cutting and squeezing ahead whether its getting onto a bus or into an attraction. Anyway...)   The site was eventually abandoned and overgrown until an British group out hunting tiger rediscovered it in 1819.  One of the party,  John Smith, thoughtfully carved his name into one of the columns.                            
 

    We spent 3 nights at a small hotel in Fardapur, which ended up being prettly special.  Most of our time in India has been in large cities or crammed with a bunch of other people on mass transport.  From the back hallway of our room we had an incredible view of a few small farm houses, mountains and hills (most very dry looking in this area at this season); some agricultural land; mostly cotton,onions, lentils, wandering cows, goats, sheep dogs and gypsies.  We got to wander around and found that the ground is littered with topaz and quartz crystals.  Imagine having to go through your cotton field before planting to huck out the big chunks of agate.

Buddhist cave, Adjanta

   We spent 3 nights at a small hotel in Fardapur, which ended up being prettly special.  Most of our time in India has been in large cities or crammed with a bunch of other people on mass transport.  From the back hallway of our room we had an incredible view of a few small farm houses, mountains and hills (most very dry looking in this area at this season); some agricultural land; mostly cotton,onions, lentils, wandering cows, goats, sheep dogs and gypsies.  We got to wander around and found that the ground is littered with topaz and quartz crystals.  Imagine having to go through your cotton field before planting to huck out the big chunks of agate.

Ajanta caves

      From there we headed to Aurangabad, which is another large city (900,000).  Our hotel though is in a mixed residential/hotel section and is relatively quiet and low key.  Best thing is we are 3 blocks from the train station and can walk their tomorrow morning at 3:30am when we need to catch a train to leave.  We will have been here a total of 3 nights as well.  A 45 minute bus ride got us to Ellora Caves.  They are of a more recent vintage being constructed between AD 600-1000.  Some were constructed by Buddists, others by Hindus and some by Jains.  Again they were all carved out of solid rock and some have ornate carvings on the walls, support posts and facades.  Some had paintings, some are two or three levels, others are smaller. One is a full, very large Hindu temple with very ornate carvings inside and out, 2 life size elephants in front.  Again the workmanship is incredible and the sheer time and energy expended is beyond comprehension.

2000 yr old Buddhist paintings, Ajanta

Gypsy man and son

Cave at Ellora

The different caves had different carvings depending on their religion.  The Hindus have a whole pantheon of gods, goddesses and their mythology as the subject of their carvings, as do the Buddists.  We took our time going through this site as well.  It was spread our over a larger area and involved climbing many staircases and competing with crowds.  It was all worth it though as it is pretty incredible.

Martha

Early morning in the country

Gypsy camp