Ajanta Caves

We started our Thursday with a trip to the Foreign Tourist Quota window at Chaatrapthi Shivaji Terminus got us two reserved tickets and one "unconfirmed" ticket on Friday's 21:35 train to Jalgaon, the closest town to the Buhddist caves at Ajanta. An unconfirmed ticket means that we had no seat/bunk reservation, but the guy at the window said, "This will get you on the train, and then you will manage." And so we did. After some initial confusion, we found ourself in the right car, on the bench that was the lowest bunk of three which we had the lower two reserved. After not long, a man appeared with the ticket to the third bunk and sat down across from us, a look of, "Oh crap, there are Ferengi sitting in my seat." Soon after this, the rest of the opposite bunk was occupied by three generations of one family, and then some people came in and started loading boxes of yogurt onto the top bunk opposite, and a few other people came by and wedged themselves into the fourth seats of the three seat benches. We struck up conversation with our train friends. The first guy's twitchy frown changed to a smile when he learned that we were only going along for a few hours (he was on his way to Bangladesh and would be on the train for a night a day and a night). The family were Jain and on a pilgrimage to a holy mountain where twenty of their teachers attained enlightenment, or moksha. The yogurt was for people on the same pilgrimage, and was being stocked by a tour operator - Jain dietary requirements are particularly strict. I do notice that Jains tend to have the clearest eyes of most Indians who I meet.

After a little while I set an alarm to wake us at 4am, and made claim to my bunk and Mike and Rhi to theirs, setting off a shifting puzzle after which everyone seemed to have a space to stretch out somewhat. After a few hours, I woke up cold, and tried to reach down for my bag to extract something warm like a sleeping bag or even a long sleeve shirt, but I found my way blocked by a small boy snuggled up against my backpack. After another hour or so of closing the window most of the way and trying to remind myself that it really wasn't that cold and I should really be enjoying it since I haven't been cold for a few months, he shifted and I was able to extract another shirt so that my last hour or so of almost sleep was slightly more restful.

We went to the end of the car and found that the doors were completely blocked by people sleeping on the floor. (Just like Eric and I had to do on our lucky to get on the train at all trip from Bombay to Delhi in 1991.) At about 4:15, the train stopped, but the door that we managed to open had no platform, and there was a sign that did not say Jalgaon. Someone with a flashlight was walking alongside the train and told me to stay on, which seemed like a good idea. The train started moving and fifteen minutes later stopped at Jalgaon, where we were able to get out the other side of the train with the help of a young guy who had woken up when we opened the other door and took it upon himself to help the confused looking Ferengi.

Jalgaon is a small town in northern Maharashtra. A motorcycle rickshaw brought us to the bus station where we found seats in a mini-van headed to Aurangabad, and passing by Ajanta. Ashok, a slight man who wore a blue sweater that morning and was headed to his job as a clerk in the court in Aurangabad, found us and convinced us to pile into the little black box playing Hindi show tunes. It bounced merrily along for 60km. At the town (truck stop) of Ajanta, then let us out as the dawn began to show itself. We had some tea and caught a ride with a Goods Carrier back down the hill to the caves, where we were amused by long tailed monkeys and replenished by breakfast.

The ride in the Goods Carrier was pretty exciting. The Indian trucking industry is a massive fleet of privately owned and lavishly decorated trucks. Somewhere on the front of the cab, bordered, serifed and multicolored letters declare "Goods Carrier" and the states in which the truck is licenced to operate. The back may repeat this information, but in any situation, it requests "Horn OK Please" in foot high letters. This is a request which most Indian drivers are only too happy to oblige. The interiors of these trucks' cabs are also often lavishly decorated with flowers and shrines to various dieties and of course pictures of seductive women.

The sun rose as we blinked and caffienated the haze of sleep depravation into submission and tried to figure out how to get back down the hill to the caves. We had passed them in the dark, but decided to continue on the few miles to the town so that we could at least get a cup of tea before the place opened. Ashok told us that the government bus would come every five of ten minutes, so after finishing our tea, we stood on the roadside and wited for it to appear. A few jeeps slowed down and asked us if we wanted a lift, but it seemed better not to risk acquiring an unwanted guide. One of the trucks that had been waiting pulled out, and the passengers waved at us as they left. I waved back. "They weren't offering us a ride, and you didn't turn them down, right?" Rhi asked. "Uh, maybe," I replied. "I want to ride in a Goods Carrier!" The next one that passed waved us to get in, and we were off with Asif in his elegantly carpeted 1998 Tata Behemoth. Inside were Asif, the 21 year old owner of the truck, an older man in a red checkered scarf, and the driver. Between the caves and the town of Ajanta is a rather significant hill, and the road winds down it like the drop from Los Alamos to Pojoque. The minivan managed up it OK. Asif's truck was a bit less nimble, and the driver kept it good and slow and was totally focused on the road. Except when I snapped a shot of the guy in the red checkered scarf and he wanted to see the picture. in any case we made it back down the hill without incident.

The caves are a 4km walk from the main road up in a horseshoe shaped river valley. There was a bus, but we opted to walk. The end of the monsoons two months ago and the lack of moisture since has turned was is clearly a totally green and lush place for part of the year into sparse trees and dry brown scrub. About halfway to the caves, we were overtaken by a group of elementary school kids. As they snuck up behind us, Rhi suggested that we turn around and yell, "BOO!"

1 ... 2 ... 3

(kids shrieking)

It made us some new friends.

At the end of the road, we stashed our packs in the cloakroom and headed up the stairs cut into the stone. From the side of the cliff where the ticket office was chiseled into the rock, one could see the walkway snaking around the bend of the river, connecting the thirty caves cut into the rock halfway up the hundred or so meters of cliff above the river.



We were completely unprepared for what we encountered. I was expecting to find some caves where some monks would go to meditate, and had maybe carved a few statues and painted the walls with some interesting images. The first cave, like many of the others, was a large rectangular (almost square) hall, supported by carved pillars, with painted walls and ceiling, and at the back, an alcove containing a huge statue of the Buddha sitting in a lotus position and holding his hands in a gesture of teaching. One of the caretakers motioned for us and a few others who were standing around to come back into the alcove and lowered the rope that blocked it off. Standing with my back to the cool stone and looking up at the peaceful smile of the stone figure, I felt a reverential awe and heard something deeper and softer than silence.



We emerged blinking into the morning sunlight. Mike was starting to suffer from something flu-like brought on by jet lag, strange food, and a night on the train, and the hordes of vacationing schoolkids had caught up with us again. But even this didn't seem to perturb our amazement with the place. Many of the caves were shoes-off caves, and so we simply carried our shoes and felt the smooth stone of the path between the caves with our bare feet.



Some of the caves were like the first one, with variations on the individual elements but the same basic layout. In one of them, a scene from the life of Gautama is depicted making use of vanishing point perspective. This is amazing, considering that the development of these caves happened mostly during the 2nd and 1st centuries BC and the 5th to 7th AD, at least seven centuries before Durer made his famous investigations.



Other caves had a deeper rectangular floor plan, and housed a stupa or dagoba consisting of a sphere supporting a square pedestal. These were also richly decorated with carvings and paintings on the walls and columns.



Looking at the walls covered with thousands of images of Buddha, I contemplated how this one individual has become an icon of enlightenment, but that the message of the philosophy is that all beings exist with the potential for this state of existence. Whatever enlightenment is, it is not something that is exclusively owned by Siddharta Gautama. The repitition of the image of Buddha seemed to make the point that there are many Buddhas, many teachers, many experts in deep meditation. This is clearly an idea that finds expression in all the large world religions. Eventually, one's relationship with the universe is a personal thing. One might hone and refine that relationship through study or meditation or prayer or devotion to a church or Tantric exploration of hedonism, but there is no extracting the individual that understands from the understanding. A room full of Buddhas mirrors a world full of people living in a state of awareness of which he is the symbol.




As we made our way through the caves, various other groups of people meandered in and out of sync with us, including a group of yellow robed monks from Thailand. It was interesting to watch the monks exploring like any other group of tourists, taking pictures of each other ("Hey, get one of me praying in front of this one!") and staring drop-jawed at the immensity of the place. We jokingly suggested that some of them were not actually monks, but just some Thai guys who had said, "Hey, lets shave our heads and get some of those yellow robes and go around visiting Buddhist stuff!" And then one of them said, "You guys shave your heads, I'm going to wear this leapoard print hat and carry a cane wearing a different colored robe. They'll think I'm the head monk!" They were very friendly, and had Mike take a group picture of them in front of one of the Dagobas, but somehow, we didn't get that picture in any of our cameras. There was also a small group of Tibetan monks who we passed when we were on our way out. "Tashi Deleg," (hello) I said to one of them as we passed, gathering a response of, "? ! :) Tashi Deleg!"

We also ran into Brian Conrad, and we finally introduced ourselves. I had thought that I had met him at some point, but I guess I hadn't. "You might have met my twin brother, he also does math," he said when I explained why I hadn't introduced myself earlier.




By the time we had made it to the 29th cave, it was mid afternoon and we were totally exhausted. It was all we could do to haul ourselves back to the bottom of the stairs. Luckily the restaraunt by the coat check had some lime water and food for us. We took the bus back to the main road, and found a shady spot to decide what our next plans would be. As we were thinking, a group of schoolkids got off one of the busses that was ferrying people back, and they all wanted their picture taken with us. (This had actually been a repeating theme throughout the day.) The idea really caught on, and for the next five minutes, we found ourselves posing with a succession of kids, some of whom brought hats for us to wear, but I bet that few of whom actually smiled for the camera. Their teacher was trying to herd them onto the bus, but then he suddenly broke ranks or succumbed to persuasion - no way to tell which - and came over to join a photo. I'd be really amused to know what becomes of those photos.

Eventually, we decided that we would head into Aurangabad, continuing another 100 km along the way we had started out in the morning. Rhi decided that this time, she wanted a ride in the back of a goods carrier. It seemed that the highway djinn or whatever they call them in these parts were in to responding to her requests, because the next truck that pulled up had a back full of boxes of rice and a few guys who waved us in. We clambered in and had a great view of the countryside as we climbed slowly up the hill. In the town of Ajanta, the driver told us that we would have to ride up front with him, maybe because us being b ack there was disrupting traffic as everyone slowed down to take pictures of the Ferengi sitting on the boxes of rice in the back of the truck. The rest of the ride was long and we were squished into the not-as-roomy-as-Asif's cab, and Mike was running a fever and feeling generally not so good. The scenery was quite nice, with rolling hills, fields of cotton (bordered by what looked like giant riacin plants?), groups of buffalo lounging in the shade, oxen with brightly painted horns pulling carts and plows, and a group of boys playing cricket in every village.

A little after dark, we made it to Aurangabad, took a bus to the train station, and checked into a hotel suggested by the Lonely Planet. Mike crashed out and Rhi and I had dinner and played Scrabble. We didn't keep score, but she clearly thwomped me by getting both blanks and making seven letter words with both, but I did put down saith and gaijin, which made it a successfull game on my part as well.

In the morning Mike still wasn't feeling well, so we decided to not go to the caves at Ellora of the meteorite crater at Lonar this time and I walked over to the train station and picked up a ticket to head back to Mumbai.

Our train left at 2:45 in the afternoon, and there seemed to be no mention of what car to get into on the ticket. We ended up in a second class chair car, and managed to get half a butt worth of seat each, which we managed to improve to a two person bench to share among the three of us after a couple hours. People made their way up and down the train selling tea and coffee and samosa and vada pav and deep fried potato sandwiches. (I had to try one eventually, but it was cold and I immediately wished that I hadn't.) We were certainly a conversation piece. After we had been there for a while and made some new friends, a guy got on at one of the stops and claimed to have one of our seats reserved. It was quite clear that nobody else in the car was sitting in a reserved seat, so we just gave him a look of incredulity and ignored him. Someone in the next bench said something to him which I think probably translated roughly to, "I don't think that they are that stupid. Besides, we like them." In any case, he left and did not reappear. After over seven hours, we made it back to VT and took a taxi back home.