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| The Jain shrine caves were most impressive. They were more open so the light was better and the detail of the carving was amazing. The flash light I used was LED and created a blue tint wherever I used it. |
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| Being more open there were also darker sections which the bats seem to enjoy as you can see below (they didn't like our flashlights which made getting the pictures hard). |
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| The caves in Ellora were not in such a remote location and so they were never really abandoned, people live in the various caves as their homes. So there are holes in the rock which people used to mount clothes lines and holes in the floor where they ground wheat and such. They also burned fires as needed and so the surviving paintings were covered with soot. Above is a section of painting where someone tryed scrubbing off the soot (to not very good effect in my opinion). In a cave in Ajanta an effort was made to preserve a painting with shellac which turned out to be bad idea that has not been corrected as yet. |
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| We then headed back to the start in our bus (running the gauntlet of vendors this time) and started with the earliest caves, Buddhist, shown here with our guide, Ayaz, and Gabrielle. Ayaz suggested that the long rows in this shrine room may have allowed monks to eat there using the raised area as a table for their food with monks on each side. No one knows for sure, of course, but my guess is that it was used as in Tibetan shrines for holding the texts when chanting and food for meals when appropriate. |
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This page was last updated on March 26, 2012.
