We really enjoyed our luxury executive chair train seats (the bathroom had toilet paper, soap and a hand dryer!!). We were deep in the brain fog stage of the sickness from Mumbai so with the additional chaotic energy from our earlier train mishaps we were in a crazy mood. The train ride was a 6.5 hour journey and we didn’t write any blog posts, read any of our books, or do anything productive. 

By this point we were no longer bedridden with constant trips to the toilet, however we were still in a bad way. Neither of us had an appetite and we still needed urgent trips to the bathroom semi regularly. On our first night in Aurangabad we forced ourselves to eat some steamed rice with a bowl of yoghurt for dinner in the hopes that it would help our poor stomachs.

Aurangabad was a bit of a detour for us as we had to go inland to get there, and to get to our next destination we would have to backtrack on a bus. So what were we doing in this hot and arid city in the middle of India?? While we were in Sri Lanka I had loved visiting some of the ancient Buddhist cave temples such as the Dambulla caves. I had heard about some of the earliest and most incredible Buddhist cave temples in the world known as the Ajanta and Ellora caves located in the hills surrounding Aurangabad. So we had two days allocated to exploring these special places in 40°C temps while still suffering from the shits. It was going to be a real test of our resilience, and hopefully still an enjoyable experience.

We visited the Ajanta caves on the first day. It was an early start at 5am as the taxi from Aurangabad takes about 3 hours each way. We met another couple from our hostel who split the cost with us which helped. The Ajanta caves are a valley of 30 rock-cut caves dating back to around 200 BC. They were once home to thousands of Buddhist monks, who used the caves as a monsoon retreat. Some of the caves still include remnants of mural wall paintings depicting the life of the Buddha. Some of the caves are huge and intricately carved on the inside. It is so hard to imagine the time and effort required to chisel these caves out of the rock by hand. The time of year we visited was not the best as it was extremely hot and dry so the valley was very dead looking. After the monsoon the whole valley comes alive with a lush jungle and waterfalls cascading over the caves.

We spent the following day at the Ellora cave complex which is about an hour's drive from Aurangabad. To be honest, I knew less about these caves and didn’t really know what to expect when we arrived other than the famous Kailasa temple which is on the 20 rupee note. Safe to say this temple alone completely blew our minds. It is the largest monolithic rock structure in the world. As well as this, the entire temple was carved from the top down and is over 30m high, 90m long and 50m wide. An estimated 200,000 tons of rock were removed by chiseling downwards. It has multiple levels with bridges, towers, balconies and life sized elephant statues. Inside the central part of the temple some of the paintings from Hindu mythology are still visible, and carvings of gods are visible everywhere. The temple was constructed around 750 CE and likely took around 100 years and many generations of carvers and laborers.

Over an hour had passed by while we were exploring this incredible temple when we remembered we still had 30+ caves to explore. So first we started with the 12 Buddhist caves, which were similar to the Ajanta caves, however more recently built. The next 17 caves were Hindu caves, some of which were enormous multi-storied complexes filled with intricate stone sculptures of Hindu gods. Last but not least, there was a section of Jain caves which were some of the first Jain temples we have seen. Something I really loved about the Ellora caves is how three separate religions coexisted in the same area. It is common to see temples desecrated when a different religious group arrives in the area, but at the Ellora caves this was not the case.

Now don’t forget we were both fighting a nasty stomach bug this whole time, so there were many quick visits to some very gross public toilets (Alice had frogs in one of her toilet bowls). This combined with 40°C temperatures, made it very tough but also very rewarding. I was so glad we stuck to our original plan of going out of our way to see these amazing caves as they really are one of a kind.