Nasik to Ellora and the Ellora Caves

Cave 10, ribbed ceiling and Buddha

Cave 5, possibly an assembly hall

Thanks to the world's loudest dogs we had a very broken sleep. With the dogs barking on and off from 4am, it wasn't too hard to drag ourselves out of bed. It's not like we'd get any more sleep anyway.
We hit the road and were surprised by how chilly it was. To get onto the main road Chris took us on a nice shortcut through some kind of tent city where we spotted our first camels. People went about their usual morning routines of teeth brushing and hair combing having emerged from tents created from a mish mash of tarps, sarongs and whatever else was laying around.

We stopped for a glass of roadside chai to warm up and felt like superstars as seemingly the entire town came out to watch us sip our tea. I'm talking more than thirty people standing around staring. Having livened up their morning, we continued our journey. Not much further down the road another stop was in order, this time for breakfast. We crossed our fingers that the sun would warm up while we ate.
The amount of English being spoken has decreased significantly as we've moved North. And, unfortunately, our Hindi, Tamil and Arabic have not improved. So, when the man at breakfast spoke to me in a language I didn't understand I nodded. When he spoke again, I nodded again. And we ended up with a potato mix (that looked like it belonged inside a samosa), battered and deep fried (like everything in India) and served with a mini white bread roll. Thanks to some prompting on the staff's behalf (grabbing Chris' roll, ripping it open with his bare hands and thrusting the potato patty inside) we figured out what the heck we were supposed to do with it. They love the white bread up here. In roll form and bread form. They especially enjoy stuffing it with things, battering it and deep frying the whole lot. Deep fried sandwiches. I never thought I'd see that.

Lauren and Buddha

We passed through a very agricultural India today where the number of bull drawn wooden carts seemed to triple.
We road into Ellora around lunch time, checked into Hotel Kailas and headed straight for Ellora Caves, picking up some more deep fried snacks on the way. After paying the inflated tourist price to enter the caves we sat under a tree to enjoy our snacks.
We wandered down to Cave 1 to begin the long exploration and I acted as tour guide, once again proudly reading from my giant Lonely Planet.
World Heritage Site-listed, Ellora Caves are made up of 34 caves, each carved using a hammer and chisel over five centuries by generations of Buddhist, Hindu and Jain monks. The first twelve caves are Buddhist so we spent a fair bit of time sitting on Buddha's lap. The next 17 are intricately carved Hindu caves and the final five are Jain.
From Cave 1 we walked slowly to let the raucous locals overtake us and were rewarded with a quiet look around these fascinating structures.
Some of the highlights included the Cave 10's double-height ribbed ceiling, Cave 12's huge courtyard (keep in mind every bit of stone was removed by hand) and the triple storey structures. The most famous, Kailasa Temple was, not-surprisingly, incredible.
We hiked up a path which took us to where we could view the entire temple complex of the Hindu Kailasa Temple. Taking 150 years to complete and requiring the removal of 200, 000 tonnes of rock (while making sure they left the bits they would later intricately carve) it really was beautiful and quite a feat of engineering.
To get to the Jain caves we snubbed the Tuk Tuk drivers and instead hiked along a path and hoped for the best. It led us to the right road so we could have a quick look around the last five caves. By this stage we were admittedly pretty hot and bothered after riding all day and walking through cave after cave so we were happy to be heading back to our relatively close guesthouse when we did.

Chris and Buddha

Lauren and Buddha

Cave 12's courtyard

After showers, we decided to do the social thing and went outside to chat with our neighbours. And we were sure glad we did. Out of all of the people we could have chatted with during this trip, these guys were fascinating and very knowledgable. Two brothers from Florida who were devout Hindus but, more specifically, devotees of the God Shiva. They were in India on a religious pilgrimage visiting Shiva sights and knew a lot! They filled us in on the background stories of Hinduism and many stories specific to Shiva. Of particular note was the story of why the town of Nasik is considered holy and, having just come from there, was extremely interesting.

Riding Nandi (Shiva's Bull)

Kailasa Temple

Considering they meditate for 6-8 hours a day, we were lucky to get a chance to chat with these guys. And, because they spoke Hindi and seemed very knowledgeable, we took the chance to clarify a few things. Why are cows considered holy? What are those white sailor hats the older men wear? What does Om Sai mean?
Our conversation moved between the big issues: religion and politics. They quickly informed us why America will be better off once Obama is out.

Bats

These are a few things they told us about...
- They saw a guru walk through a wall in response to the question "what does it mean to have oneness?"
- They, and 18 other witnesses, saw special ash spontaneously forming on photos of their guru in their house and, when collected into jars, rapidly forming on the outside of the jars also. By morning...it had disappeared.

Chris' mates

- Before coming to India one of them had a dream about a saint lady they did not know. They came to India, went to a temple, saw her photo, looked her up. She meditates for 14 days straight then 'comes out of it' for two days to eat, drink and see her followers. She had done so only two days before their arrival so they were told there was no chance they could see her. They sat and prayed for 8 hours and she miraculously decided to give 'darshan' and they were able to see her. In fact, she asked to see them twice. But, of course, she doesn't speak so she communicated through her boys.
- They said, turning your back, and exposing your chakras, to some particular lingam (shaft shaped structure representing Shiva) will make you pass out if you're close enough to it because of the great energy it exudes.
- They said, some people can calmly sit down and die at will. And, if you are there you can see their soul evacuating through their head causing heat (thanks to friction) strong enough to make their hair fall out
- There is a lingam that puts out so much energy that you can lean toward it and not fall over

One of the Jain temples