Ellora, Ajanta and Omkareshwar

It would have been too nice if everything till the end of my trip happened smoothly and as expected. I must also say that one and a half month beachside had probably weakened me a little… Of course, my hopes and delusions were quickly brought back to the Indian reality!

I had booked a night sleeper bus ticket to leave Goa and arrive the next morning in Mumbai. ”Sleeper” means that you have a berth were you can lie down and, supposedly, sleep. The berth is usually the size of a shoebox, but is enough to put your luggage in and be relatively comfortable. I was happy with the size of my berth when I got into the bus, and thought I would spend a rather good night… until the conductor told me that I would have to share it with someone else. Now, I know that all the plans for these buses were probably made at least 30 years ago, when Indians were all midgets, and have not been changed since then. But nowadays, there are a lot of Indians thatare actually tall, bulky or fat (or the three combined). Therefore, maybe it is time to revise the way these berth are made since I ended up sharing mine with the biggest Indian guy I have seen through this trip: a 2 meters tall dude that probably pumps iron 5 times a week! Needless to say that our two muscular frames did not fit very well in that berth, and that I was on the verge of getting really claustrophobic during that trip. Anyway, arriving in Mumbai was a big relief and I spent the rest of the day sleeping.

After a few days in Mumbai, which I will cover in a subsequent post, I decided to go for a last tour into “real India”: Direction Ellora, Ajanta and Omkareshwar, about half a day from Mumbai. First, after a train ride that took two more hours than expected in a seater carriage that took five times more passengers than it was built for, I arrived in Aurangabad, a shithole (still 900,000 inhabitants) where there is nothing to do and the guesthouses are disconcertingly dirty. I had booked a taxi to go on a tour to Ellora and Ajanta on the next day: I was tired with public transports and it made me save one day in the process (and at Rs 2,000 for a full day and 300 kilometres, it was not that expensive).

Ellora and Ajanta are two amazing sites: both are groups of 30 temples that were dug and carved within cliffs between 1,000 and 1,500 years ago. Ajanta only has Buddhist temples, with remains of wall paintings all over the place, whilst Ellora has Buddhist, Hindu and Jain temples, some of which are beautifully carved and just let you wonder how much time it took the craftsmen to make this happen. These two visits took the best part of the day and my cab was then taking me to Jalgaon, another horrible city where there is nothing to do (400,000 inhabitants) where I was going to spend the night before taking an early train the next morning. Of course, we had to stop on the way to help push a bus that had a battery issue, but the ride went smoothly.

The next day was also OK and I finally arrived in Omkareshwar, one of these holy towns where pilgrims come and bathe in the local river. The place is built on both sides of a river, one half being on an island that is in the shape of the OM symbol (hence the holiness of Omkareshwar)… or rather, that was in the shape of the OM symbol until they decided to build a massive dam nearby, which changed the landscape for ever. It is still nice though. The only thing is that I had not planned that there would be a Hindu festival during my stay. On the first day, this is OK and looks cool, with the Ghats being full of people bathing and the streets being animated at the sound of mantras and songs. The thing is, that after three days of hearing all day long “Om Nama Shiva Ya” and “Are Rama, Are Krishna”, from 5.00 am to midnight (!!), I was becoming totally crazy. Yes there seem to be only two songs in the Hindu religion and the lyrics are not very varied. Omkareshwar is also one of those places where you meet very few western tourists, where no one speaks English, and where, even though you cannot speak Hindi, people keep on trying to have conversations with you and won’t let you go until they have an answer… tiring! I think (not sure though) I got offered to spend some quality time with the cleaning lady (I still wonder what she was cleaning) of my guest house at some point, against money… Imagine a really (really, really) fat ugly Indian woman smiling to me, whilst the guest house’s maintenance guy, also smiling, kept on telling me “Nice lady” and “Enjoy, yes?”, with rolling eyes… brilliant! So it was time for me to leave and go back to Mumbai, which I did.

I first had to stop in Indore for the day between two buses. Indore is possibly the most horrible place I have been to in India: dirty, polluted, overcrowded, nothing to do. I hated it from the first few minutes (plus I was tired because of a very early bus, so I was in no mood of dealing with misunderstanding, being misunderstood, getting lost, etc.). I had booked a night bus to Mumbai and, to spare myself the bad surprise of last time, I decided to go for a seater: at least I knew I had my own space. Of course the unforeseen happened and what I thought would be a standard, reclining bus seat materialised into being a one-person sleeping berth that I had to share with another dude! It makes, of course, a lot of sense: you cannot lie down so you have to seat! This time, I think I really developed some degree of claustrophobia and I spent one of the most uncomfortable nights in my entire life. Thankfully, the guy I was sharing the berth with was rather small and skinny, otherwise, I would have probably killed him (I think I was already about to do it sometimes…).

Finally, I made it to Mumbai and now, I am not moving until my flight home. I will tell you more about the big city and why I think it is time for me to go home in my next post.

Take care,

Matt

And now, few pics:

 The caves in Ellora

 Ellora, again

Some of them look like cathedrals once inside  

 Another cave-temple in Ellora

 Painting in Ajanta

 View of the caves in Ajanta

 Still in Ajanta

 They are Buddhist caves

 View of Omkareshwar

The Ghats in Omkareshwar