Aurangabad & Ajanta Caves

Oh how things can change overnight eh - quite literally given the first taste of India's ancient rail network! The scene that greeted us as we arrived at the city's Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus (an awsome looking building erected, of course, by the Brits) will never be forgotten. Imagine 100 Eustons piled on top of each other and then multiply the number of bodies ten fold!

Heading on our first overnight journey - to Aurangabad some 400km east - we were stunned to find half a dozen smelly bar stewards curled up in our designated beds some 90 minutes ahead of departure. And the situation just got worse! By the time we were ready to hit the sack more than three times the number of permitted bodies has engulfed the carriage (old, young, healthy and sick) giving it the look and feel of one of those lorries you pass on the motorway packed full with cattle on their way to the slaugher house! Course just our luck that we opted for the same train as some 2000 freedom fighters heading east after a convention in Mumbai. Tickets, what tickets! No wonder so many buggers die when the trains here derail or crash!

We arrived in Aurangabad in one piece (though in desperate need of delicing and deoderant) at about 5am and didn't have to wander the streets for long before a group of bedraggled street urchins collared us and informed us of a "good place to stay". Given the night's adventures we simply followed like homesick dogs and were releaved to curl up under clean sheets less than half an our later.

As for the town, what a shithole! If the rest of India is like this then so help us God! Rickshaw drivers with a death wish dominate the trash-ridden streets, while feral goats, pigs, cows and dogs follow you around constantly. People are rude and no help whatsoever (they merely point with their noses and chins without so much as looking you in the eye), while the dust and fumes make nose-picking a hazard.

Mind you, the caves are something special, if a little monotonous. Discovered by a British hunting party in the mid 1800s the offered us our first serious insight into the history that hangs over the sub-continent like a thick layer of cloud. The first Buddhist cave monuments date from the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. During the Gupta period (5th and 6th centuries A.D.), many more richly decorated caves were added to the original group. The paintings and sculptures of Ajanta, considered masterpieces of Buddhist religious art, have had a considerable artistic influence.a period (5th and 6th centuries A.D.) and more richly decorated caves were added to the original group. Paintings are considered masterpieces of Buddhist religious art and have had a considerable artistic influence since.