So I left my invisible husband in Aurangabad.
The online reservation I made through EasyCabs came through after all. Although the driver did get a bit lost and I had to hand my phone to the front desk to pass on directions, he arrived on time and the back seat had (gasp) seatbelts. The clean, modern, spacious, flashback-to-Heathrow airport that is Delhi’s Domestic Terminal 3 was a pleasant place to relax and purchase a swirly gold ring, which I put on at the store while four attentive clerks (groomsmen?) watched. (Enough of my friends and co-workers expressed concern that I was traveling alone, this was the best I could do on short notice aside from packing Guido in my backpack.)
At the airport, I also learned the yoga Sun Salutation.
Boarding was a breeze. The pilot sped around the curve and we took off. The flight attendants (dressed in saris) served us a full meal, but no soft drinks, for the less than an hour and a half flight. At Aurangabad, a man was waiting with my name on a sign. “The Meadows welcomes Ms. Melissa Fedak”. I love when people are waiting at airport exits with my name on a sign. Partly because of the justification for ignoring the calls of “taxi ma’am” around me but really because it just makes me feel special. Look, that’s my name, that’s ME.
As hoped, the staff at the hotel were able to book a tour guide and driver for me for the next two days, despite the short notice. My room was a cottage that I’ll call “India clean” that had a back door. Around sunset, I opened the back door and heard what I believe was a Muslim call to prayer. Quite beautiful. Then I got a phone call where the man on the other end very persistently tried to sell me a massage. After my hesitation, he changed it to a food massage. Which I understood after a few repetitions to be a foot massage. Not so beautiful.
My room in the cottage
Alone in the hotel restaurant – I had yet to see any other guests – I perused the menu for dinner, realizing that the helpful English descriptions are only useful when you actually know what an aubergine is.
(Just looked it up. Eggplant. Ah, that makes sense now.)
Too cold (and loud) with the air conditioner on and too hot with it off, I finally managed to keep just the fan consistently running and tried to get to sleep. Woke up with over 10 mosquito bites on my arms. (Even though I killed the one mosquito I did see.) Sigh.
My tour guide arrived so promptly at 9am, I missed the last course of my gradually served “American style” breakfast where the choices of how I wanted my egg cooked were “boil, boil and fry, or scrambled.” Obviously, I must have misheard so I ordered “fried.” No, I heard correctly. The eggs arrived hard boiled. Then deep fried.
I liked my Sikh tour guide immediately. He wanted to take me to a fort on the way to Ellora Caves “before it got too hot”. I shrugged and was thinking, another boring fort, ok I guess, but this was the Coolest Fort Ever! This was cool in a Helm’s Deep kind of way. With monkeys.
No railings? Another way the enemy could be defeated! If the baby monkeys didn’t snuggle them to death.
What made this fort worth it (like Fort Worth?) was how you could clearly envision its defensibility. Besides the walls within walls surrounding a moat that was actually deep (3 stories deep), there were clever double gates at a ninety-degree angle that made it hard for a battering ram or elephant to get through, with a hiding place for soldiers. Then there was path that turned into a tiny opening that soldiers would have to crawl through one at a time, making them a target for a beheading. (The tour guide even showed me the side drop-off to the moat where they could throw enemy bodies to the crocodiles below, oh yes.)
Then there was the Passage of Dark. Inside was a dark, and I mean pitch black, passage full of bats that twisted and curved up and down. Tour guide brought the required flashlight to navigate it. I love bats, even the one that startled me by briefly landing on my shoulder. I love bats because they eat mosquitoes.
If the attackers made it past the passage, then they would come upon a circular path that doubled back on itself, so they might turn on their own army, thinking it was the enemy. The two exits, if they could find them, were the correct one that in the past was kept discouragingly warm with a distant fire. The tempting path with a cool breeze led right into a hole that dropped you into the moat! This fort is full of clever.
If you were to continue after that, you’d get to the sheer 90-foot cliff they carved into the hillside. The fort itself was never penetrated. The only way an enemy won was to starve the tenants out.
In short, Daulatabad Fort = Win
It was sunny and getting hotter by the minute. Probably high 80s by now. We bought cold water at a stand across the street after the guide assured me that it was safe and the water was a good brand (and I checked, as always, that I had to break the cap). Then I applied sunscreen. And off we went, thanks to our patient driver (who kept the car shaded and air-conditioner running ahead of time for us) to Ellora Caves.
The Ellora Those-Aren’t-Caves
The Ellora Caves were built a long time ago. Between the 5th and 11th century. That’s old! Three religions: Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain are represented, co-existing peacefully. Carved figures, small and big, are everywhere.
Also, the Ellora Caves are not caves.
Cave 16. Not a Cave.
Storytelling in Stone
Rock Overhang Won’t
Collapse Now, Right?
Sneaky
Smoochers
They were excavated and built downward (or inward), all out of one piece of volcanic rock. Cave 16 is the largest monolithic structure in the world. I look at it. And my brain does not compute that this is what they say this is. It’s impossible. The time, the effort, the planning, the manpower, the skill this would have taken to do… It’s too mind-boggling to exist.
Cave 16 (there are over 30 caves, but it’s all about Cave 16) is also called Kailasha. The illusion is convincing. There are pillars and supports as if it was built from the ground up. But it was built from the top down.
Even standing inside, I can’t believe what I’m looking at. It just kind of looks like a cool, old slowly disintegrating stone/concrete temple. No one carved it out of rock. Because that would be unthinkably difficult.
In this and other caves were repeating themes and characters. The Jain figures of one sect are all nude and have a Buddha-like figure in the center flanked by a husband and wife (on an elephant and lion respectively). On one side is a devotee meditating so long and intently to reach enlightenment that he has vines growing up around him. Opposite that is the previous incarnation of the Buddha with a seven-headed cobra above him. Cave 16 is Hindu and full of dancing figures and elephants. In the Buddhist caves, there is almost always a large Buddha sitting mysteriously in the center chamber furthest back, the stone figure barely lit by the daylight. (One partially finished statue with just a head freaked me out a bit.)
Many of the Buddhist caves functioned as living quarters for monks and had a central church-like place of worship to gather. Hard to imagine living in such a place with little light and no plumbing. But fantastic echoes. (My tour guide treated me to some spontaneous chanting; indeed an impressive sound.)
Cave 10:
Stone Imitating Wood,
Cavity Imitating Structure
Still technically not a cave
After we toured the significant caves (where I steadfastly avoided buying the official “Ellora and Ajanta” book that every tout was selling), I asked to see the closeby Ghrishneshwar Temple because I had seen a cool photo of it online.
The tour guide warned me a little too late that this was more a religious destination than a tourist destination. No photography allowed anywhere on the grounds. (Really? Then where did the photo on the internet come from?) Again with the shoes off and stepping on dirty, shod places (ugh), then awkwardly walking in the middle of lots of Hindu devotees, the two of us: a blonde and a Sikh. Out of place much? Somehow, he enabled me to cut in line, which I didn’t want to do, and go and make an offering, which I didn’t have. Started to feel uncomfortable and declined and we left.
Mood took a further downturn when I got dragged to a tourist shop. Still half in my shopping mode from last weekend, I thought maybe I’d actually find something. No. I somehow got skillfully roped into this sales pitch about the famous himroo fabric (silk and cotton) which sure, is very nice and well-made and all, but the only scarf he showed me that I had any mild interest in was $120. No. Not for an unsolicited scarf. Sorry. Then I had to feel that guilt of obligation or whatever. Lovely.
At least he remembered lunch. Our shared paneer, dal, and naan was tasty. Noticed that he did not seem to pay. Wonder if he gets a free lunch for bringing his clients here.
He dropped me off at the hotel after that. It was about 2:30. I gave him (as well as the driver) a tip, because I do that. I was slightly disappointed, though, because I had been hoping for a full day See Everything kind of tour. And there was still plenty of daylight left. Happily for me, the hotel staff were up to the task. I was able to grab my same driver, ask the staff their top picks from the pamphlet, and have him take me there, guide or no guide, within minutes.
1. Panchakki I’m sure there is a mill somewhere around here and something special about it that I was supposed to see? I looked all around to make sure I wasn’t missing this 400-year-old mill of historical significance, but I think I walked the whole grounds and checked around every corner. I did see a rotating fan thing in the water spinning a stone grinder. I guess that was it?
I saw cool other stuff in the meanwhile:
Banyan Tree
Found cool overgrown stairs looking for the mill
Caught on camera unintentionally: family of four on motorcycle
There were two kids who managed to extract three chocolates each from me because they were so darn cute (though I saw noticeably less begging here than in Delhi and did not give away all I brought). Panchakki wasn’t really a waste of time, but I missed entirely why I paid 100 rupees.
2. Bibi-ka-Maqbara This is Aurangabad’s pride. The name simply means White Mausoleum I believe. I was most surprised to find that this Taj-looking building is nearly as old as the Taj itself! As I stood in the entrance way (following the security check), an old man in flip-flops offered to explain the details in the entry structure to me for 100 rupees. I hesitated, then finally just shrugged and said okay. A bit afterward, as we started walking the grounds, I began to wonder if he was going to say later, “well, the entry was 100 rupees, but the rest is another 500″ or whatever. Trying to guess what the final total would be, I followed the old guide around.
Bibi Ka Maqbara
(Not the Taj Mahal)
As we strolled, he gave a pretty decent explanation of various points of interest (like how this place is a third the size of the Taj and not all marble due to budgetary constraints) and took photos of me. A lot of people took photos of me including, a bit to my surprise, two well-dressed girls, taking a photo with me each separately (so this isn’t something just guys do). And I was in a family photo, then just with their kids. Then with a couple polite guys. I’m sure I was pretty sweaty and sunburned at this point, but still interesting enough I guess. I wonder if I’m more approachable because I’m alone or if they’ll go up to any of the non-Indian tourists.
Finally, at the end, I just asked how much I owed him, preparing to wince.
But all he said was, “as you like.”
You win! My offered 500 rupees went like lightening from my hand to his shirt pocket. My dutifully waiting driver then took me to my final stop.
View of Bibi from Aurangabad Caves
3. Aurangabad Caves Some of these were actually caves (meaning naturally caved out rock) but there were the temples and Buddhas too. And lots of stairs. My favorite part was actually the view back to the city (and the minarets of the mini-Taj in the distance.) A variety of people were checking out the caves; Indian tourists, non-Indian tourists, some groups of local guys. Every time I notice a group of guys staring at me, I’m now saying “hello”. Without exception, they always say “hello” politely back, it’s actually kind of funny. Though if I feel any creepy factor (I usually don’t) then I keep my distance.
Aurangabad Caves
The desired action here is unclear.
(Also, what the heck is a chapple?)
Aurangabad (Actual) Caves
Aurangabad Boobs
When I got back to the hotel, I asked if there was any internet. (I think every hotel in the world advertises internet. I learned in Russia how little that is a predictor of actual internet.) The woman – the same woman I see every single time I approach the front desk – confidently said yes. Then she went to check with someone. Then she invited me into the hotel’s back accounting room to let me use one of their computers. (!) It was slow. And had discouraging virus-checker notifications popping up a lot. But I got my internet fix.
I skipped dinner and just had munchies and watched TV. The cable channels scrolling through the guide were a tease. Most of them were not available. But they did have National Geographic and Discovery: Science and that kept me mostly occupied. I also watched BBC News and the Al Jazeera English network for a while just to get that refreshing view of America outside of America.
The woman at the desk called me, just double checking that I didn’t want that massage. Why don’t people get it? The more you try to sell me something, the less I want it, regardless of what it is. Case in point: pasta sauce. I found this pasta sauce in my supermarket that looked like it had all natural ingredients. I bought it. It was fine. But every time I go to any supermarket in this chain, they coincidentally push this pasta sauce on me. “All natural,” they say. I’m now supremely suspicious of the pasta sauce. As far as the massage goes, the main problem is that this is not the kind of hotel I’d expect a massage at. This is no five-star luxury.
Does this reek of in-authenticity or what? I mean, besides the three or so spelling errors.
I turned on the A/C tonight after my hot shower. My exhaustion from the long day was adequate for me to tune out the noise and get a good night’s sleep. I had significantly less new mosquito bites in the morning. I guess that is a win.