My India Tour an account of a visit to Ajanta Caves and the Sculptures at Mahabalipuram

My Indian Tour by Sainath Raorane

Our journey from Lonavala began with catching trains to Aurangabad. From the train I saw flat countryside with fields of sugarcane, grapes, guava trees, and later on fields of cotton. 

Aurangabad is also called ‘the city of gates’ because it has 52 gates from the Moghul Era.

Ajanta caves are 100km from Aurangabad in the Sahyadri Hills. They were discovered in 1819 by a group of British officers out tiger hunting. There are 30 caves, the earliest dating from the 2^nd century. They are decorated with beautiful paintings and sculptures made by Buddhist monks. The monks lived in the caves during the monsoon , on the side of a river, in isolated and peaceful surroundings.

The walls and ceilings of the caves were covered with paintings, some of which have survived and tell of the Jataka stories about Buddha’s life and previous lives as a human and as an animal.

  Pictures show palaces and ordinary homes, villages and towns, rich people and poor people. There were flowers and animals, and scenes from everyday life .The paint colours were made from local soils though there was a blue colour called Lapis Lazuli which was imported from Iran. The drawing was fine drawing with perspective, light and shade, lyrical movement and poses. Gods and musicians, beautiful women, animals and plants, covered every inch of the caves.

There were two phases of painting, the earliest which survive in caves 8 and 9 go back to the 2nd century. the second period of paintings started in 4th and 5th centuries and went on for the next 2 centuries.

 One sculpture is fantastic, it shows four deer standing together with only one head. Several ceiling designs were 3D and moved with us.an early cave we saw figures having different designs of clothing. One fellow was wearing a kurta with designs of stripes, another had a kurta with a check design. From this we can understand that these types of modern design are really very ancient.

Early caves had stupas to represent Buddha. Later ones had statues of Buddha in teaching pose.

We went to Allahabad by plane, my first time in an aeroplane. The land looked like tiny squares of fields surrounded by lakes. The sea was rolling at the land like a small handkerchief. We flew through clouds like white cotton and the sky was blue above the sea of clouds. We stayed with Manya didi’s friend and we visited the Sangam of three rivers, the Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati.

The Yamuna water was dark coloured water and the Ganga was lighter. The Saraswati is invisible. We did a Puja offering three coconuts and flowers. Didi did not pay for a Pujari but paid for me to be helped out of the boat and to put my feet in the water. We drove through the Mela grounds, over pontoon bridges, where thousands of tents were being prepared for the month-long Kumb Mela. 


At night the lights look like thousands of sparkling stars.

From Allahabad we flew to Chennai to 
travel on to Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu. There we saw large rocks carved into ‘chariots’ or ‘raths’.

We saw the Shore temple and best of all we visited a huge sculpture on two huge rocks telling the story of the formation of the river Ganga. Siva and Vishnu surrounded by holy men and women, nagas, yakshas, kinnaras, animals and birds.

We went to a festival of folk and bharatnatyam  dancing . It was skillfull and rhythmic.

I thank Manya Didi that I was able to visit these devotional places. The memory of this tour will remain with me for ever.