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A Mukherjee World View | ||
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Ellora, Goodbye!
Having decided to treat ourselves to a prolonged goodbye at Ellora, we started early. We went first to Kailasha, to take some early morning pictures looking out over the top of the temple. After a quick break for a hearty breakfast, we headed for the caves we had not yet seen – Caves 28 and 29. These were inconveniently located south of the Jaina caves and north of everything else. Cave 29 connects to Cave 27 by means of a narrow path behind what would in wet weather be a waterfall. Cave 28 is a tiny cave, cut low in the rock along this path. From Cave 27, a flight of steps led down to the path, around the bowl of rock that would have played host to the waterfall and straight to a steep flight of steps that led up to a side entrance to Cave 29. Cave 29 was enormous and fascinating. It had three entrances, one on each side and the main front entrance, each guarded by a pair of lions. The back had the sanctum sanctorum and was in deep shadow, thick with bats.
We went to the Jaina caves next, and then took the path over the hill, past the hidden cave, Cave 30, scrambled down the hill at Cave 29 went down the steps and across the waterfall and came up at Cave 27. We strolled across to Cave 21 and admired the huge panel sculpture depicting Shiva’s marriage to Parvati. In this cave also was a sculpture showing Parvati defeating Shiva at dice, and a sculpture of a dhan-lobhi – a man so greedy for money that he never spent anything on food or material goods; he was depicted as a skeletal figure. Ganga and Yamuna, the river goddesses, stood at the entrance of this cave. Eventually, we wandered back towards Kailasha and adjacent caves. We spent a leisurely afternoon going in and out of these caves at random, dodging the sudden influx of tourist flocks whenever we could and shooting pictures of whatever we might have missed the first time round. At five o’clock, with a regretful last glance at Kailasha, which was just beginning to don its golden late-afternoon colours, we left. We had already checked-out of our room, so we just picked up our bags and were on a bus to Aurangabad by 5.30. Through the window, we waved goodbye to Daulatabad Fort, which did not bother to wave back to us. In Aurangabad, we made our way to the station, and spent a good one hour on the platform waiting for the train to Hyderabad, which arrived 20 minutes late. The train journey was uneventful except for being a couple of hours late in reaching. We had a flight to Bangalore at 1.30, which gave us just enough time for a quick trip to the Qutab Shahi tombs, a very quick trip to Paradise for another round of rich, delicious biryani, and then we were home, back where we started. |
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This temple was similar to the Kailasha cave in that it seemed to have been separated from the surrounding rock by means of a deep trench. Huge sculptures of Shiva in various poses decorated the walls. The two side entrances, one leading to the path by the waterfall and the other leading out through a narrow path between two towering rock walls, both provided an exciting sense of drama to the setting. It was a little secluded, so we lingered here until we were driven out by a large and noisy bunch of tourists.