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| There was a ever so cute little girl in the shop. It was also fun to see Dawa trying on saris. The next morning we were off promptly at 7:30AM for the Ajanta Caves, about 100 kilometers from Aurangabad. While traffic in Maharashtra is not as busy or crowded as Delhi, it does have its congestion and mixture of vehicles. Below is an ox pulled card and the country side. |
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| Above is a picture of an 'Ambassador" car. When I visited Delhi over thirty years ago, there were hundreds of such cars, mostly as cabs and thousands of the three wheeled cabs. Now the 'Ambassador' cars are antiques with thousands of Toyotas, Suzukis, and Tatas as well a wide mixture of other manufacturers. Once we got to Ajanta, we had to switch to a shuttle bus to take to the actual caves. Notice the engine up front. A modern exterior look but the old truck body design still used in school buses in the U.S.. Here is a picture of our driver. He is in a separate compartment, not air conditioned. Not very nice for him. Getting on and off the shuttle and walking through the markets (below) on the way to the caves, we were assailed with hordes of very aggressive vendors, each promissing great prices. Our guide warned us about them and noted that they would start asking $20 but in the end settle for $2 (100 rupees) which was my experience in India over thirty years ago. Amazing. A rupee was about 12 cents then and was the basic unit of cost, now it is 10 rupees or 20 cents. |
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| The stairs up to the caves were pretty daunting, but there were hordes of porters offering to carry us. They only wanted $12 to carry us all the way to the end and back, waiting as saw each cave. Yolanda accepted their offer and I made this video of her as the 'queen', her new nickname. It took over three hours and Yolanda ended up paying them $20 (which I think was good). There are no natural caves in this region and so the caves were all completely dug out by manual efforts. |
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This page was last updated on March 25, 2012.
