Aurangabad, Ellora und Ajanta Caves

Aurangabad is a good place to stay, good located to make day trips to the ancient buddhist, hinduist and jainist caves of Ellora and Ajanta. Meeting again tourists, and the locals here speak english - back in the civilization ;-)
First I went to the beautiful caves of Ellora and the Kailash temple, which is very impressive.




Soon, after giving up explaining to like to be for my own (what I got used to) and after buying one necklace because there are no tourists at the moment, I accepted my free guide. He really wanted to show me the caves and know the area very well. So taking a more unknown way, it was really nice to see the caves also from above
I had a private photographer ;-)









the Shiva Lingam
the holy cow looking to the temple
the "elephantgod" - Ganesh
in different forms
here - Ganesh again


... in the end I was happy to share this nice moments!
One day in Aurangabad, I decided just to hang out in the park close to my youth hostel. Just 2 minutes walking in the park, Amil joined me. He is from Mumbai, for business here, and is now waiting for the night train. Here one part of this park is a zoo, and he is going to visit it, and he asked me if I want to come with him. Yes, he invited me for all, the movie and the musical fountain show, pop corn and tea, and we had a nice talk. His friend came later to catch him for going to the train station and quickly we said good-bye, not even much time to say thank you. That is one example of India's hospitality!

The Ajanta Caves:very ancient - include good maintained, really big! statues



a clever one - I would also choose this position, if I have to hold my posture for such a long time



When meeting two spanish guys in Ellora, we made an appointment to go for a drink this night. But we missed each other - as I heared later - Aurangabad has more than one roundabout *g*. However, I was waiting one hour on the street, and after a while I started to talk with Vivek, who was also waiting for a friend, who did not appear. A good reason to make a new friend, he showed me Aurangabad from the back of a Bike. It was fantastic!
Very spontaneously, I checked out the course data of Vipassana in the middle and south of India, and I saw, that one in Eluru would fit perfect in my time plan - I mean it started in 4 days. So I had to move in this direction, to Hyderabad. There is a train, which leaves here about 3 am. So I was sitting from 10 pm to 3 am in the waiting hall, because "mama" in the youth hostel said, that it is to dangerous to take a rickshaw in the night to bring me to the train station, which is 2 km away of the hostel, even I had paid for this night in the hostel already. There I watched an old sadhu, who was shouting and beating with his stick a man, who was not able to defend himself (with only one leg). Interesting, and since I didn't really know what is a real sadhu, I had respect! (or rather was afraid?). But the "one-leg-man" was occupying the sadhus sleeping place. After, the sadhu was preparing his bed to sleep and packed all his belongings carefully in his bag again. And was very nice to the 3 year old girl, who was walking around. Notice - that was my observation - no judgment and really knowing what is going on!