“Do you know what Ajanta means?” The seller of bits of Ajanta landscape didn’t wait for my reply but continued “In sanskrit, A means No and janta means people. You see – No people.” I pointed out, tongue in cheek, the hordes of tourists milling around the 27 cave complex but he didn’t seem to hear and swiftly went back to what he was doing till then – attempting to fob off bits and pieces of Ajantan rock on me. Ajanta ( written also Ajinta on several signs) would indeed have been a quiet place two millennia ago when Buddhist monks inhabited it and carved out caves to study and ponder the riddles of existence. The caves have been excavated out of the near vertical walls of a horseshoe shaped box canyon, which as Omar Sharif memorably pointed out in McKennas’ Gold has only “one way in, one way out”. If one is superhuman, one can try to get out of the top from which cascade waterfalls; it is from a location at the top that cave no.17 was first sighted by a Brit who had gone hunting and which led to the discovery of the entire complex, which till then was lost to human eyes for over a 1000 years. This is what probably preserved it, as otherwise the Muslims, with Aurangabad just a 100 km away, would probably have defaced it and there would be nothing left now to write about. The construction of the complex extended from around 200 BC to around 600 AD, when Buddhism was at its peak in India. One can find detailed descriptions of the complex on the web and elsewhere so I will not belabor it here except to point out that the earliest caves, the ones in the middle, are Hinayana – austere, geometrical (also horseshoe shaped in a strange echo of the canyon geometry) with ribbed roofs, horseshoe shaped windows and entrances and housing stupas whose contents one can only guess at while the more recent ones, the ones to the sides, are Mahayana which date to a period by which time Buddhas had come to be depicted in person and also acquired a retinue of Bodhisattvas and other hangers-on - these caves are filled with sculptures and paintings of various sorts - phantasmagoric images of deer with multiple bodies but a single head, bulls that follow you with their gaze as you walk around and stone griffons and other mythical creatures. The paintings are more or less completely gone with the sculptures in a slightly better state but even in this condition, one can imagine the reds, blues and greens that would have adorned these cave walls 1500 years ago and brought the images leaping to life. One does not have to go far to find the source of these colours – the Ajanta stone is literally spangled with these pigments especially red, yellow and green while the blue is supposed to have been obtained from the lapis lazuli of Central Asia. After completing a tour of the complex, one can climb up to the view point from which the Brit mentioned earlier first sighted one of the caves eventually leading to the discovery of the entire structure. From there one can walk around the horseshoe shaped canyon rim and view the waterfalls. Veins of coloured rock and crystals run in the Ajantan soil and mountains and these are peddled everywhere. In its heyday, Ajanta was one of the centres of learning of the Buddhist world and the great Chinese monk, Hsieun Tsang wanted to visit it but could not. Today it is one of the Wold Heritage sites and definitely woth a visit. It takes a day to take in all the sights.
Convenient base : Aurangabad, 100 km away. There are many lodges and we stayed at Sree Maya. A 3 person room (one bed on the floor) costs 600 per night with 150 for an additional bed. The rooms are fairly clean with a few baby cockroaches. It has 24-hr checkout and polite, courteous staff. The hot water comes on only after 7 AM and if you want to leave early after a hot water bath, this could be a problem.
Mode of travel : ST (state transport) buses are the cheapest but probably not the most convenient as they are rickety and not very frequent. We hired a taxi for 4500 to go to Ajanta, Ellora (and surroundings) and Lonar crater. Sree Maya can arrange taxis.
Food : We ate cooked food only in the mornings (Poha) and night (rotis and rice). In between, we ate what we carried and these included puffed rice, groundnuts, dry fruits and lotus seeds. Spending time eating in the afternoon reduces the time one has to see and do things.
Things to do : Admire the serene Buddhas in meditation for millennia and marvel at the sheer scale of the work. Walk on the canyon rim and gasp at the views.
Things to avoid : The peddlers and the touts. If you are a tourist, you cannot walk a step in India without touts and peddlers of various sorts descending on you. Ignore them, politely but firmly. If they sense you wavering, they will latch on for the rest of the day.
Updates to Lonely Planet :
- Ajanta is closed on Monday and Ellora on Tuesday; LP has it the other way round.
- The “wonderful buffet breakfast on the terrace” at Sree Maya is no longer offered.
Ghrishneswar
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Day two was supposed to be a motley collection of things and first stop was Ghrishneshwar, site of an ancient Shiva temple and one of the 12 jyotirlingas of India. I would probably not have gone there but for my aunt. The architecture is grand but is now encased in rods for renovation work. Here the touts are of a priestly class and there are various pujas offered – the puja that my aunt opted for had me strip to my waist and do an abhishekam of the lingam, with water, milk, curds, honey and the like. There are scores of devotees gathered around it, each with a priest, doing one of these things simultaneously – so while I was anointing the lingam with turmeric, another was washing it with water. Meanwhile, a furry rat scuttled between the flowers and leaves. Even the location of the temple is nothing to write about, sitting as it does in a typically shabby Indian town with the usual eyesores like open sewers and scurrying pigs.
Ellora
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Just down the road from Ghrishneswar is Ellora, another rock cut cave and temple complex. The difference from Ajanta is that Hindu and Jain architecture are also present here. Indeed, of the 30 odd caves, almost half are Hindu with the pinnacle being Cave 16 – Kailasa. Conceived as a replica of Siva’s Himalayan abode and started by the Rashtrakuta king Dantidamana in the 6th cent. AD, it took 200 years to coax out of the stone and supposedly involved excavation of 200,000 tonnes of rock. Guide books mention that it is the largest monolithic rock structure in the world and it does live up to the hype. One feels dwarfed by the gigantic stone walls which are in most places embellished with various scenes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata. Caves 1 to 12 are Buddhist and are mostly Mahayana with many being multistoreyed with upto three stories. There are vast halls with meditating Buddhas in all directions. The Jain temples which are at the other end of the complex are typically austere, their central figures being naked men under three tiered cupolas.
Khuldabad
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This is a non-descript town except for students of history as the last great Moghul emperor Aurangazeb lies buried here. Details of Aurangzeb’s life can be gleaned from the Wikipedia; be sure to read his will at the end. He was apparently a simple man but fanatical; what endears him to me is his self-doubt and recognition that to be emperor was to wear a crown of thorns. One can find his son’s and guru’s tomb in the same complex as well. A cross eyed mullah at his guru’s tomb pointed to a heavily guarded structure (with three heavy padlocks) which is supposed to house a piece of cloth that was given by Allah to the Prophet in the seventh heaven (literally seventh sky) and that passing through various hands came to the guru and now lies there – it is opened only once a year on either Id or Milad-un-Nabi, I forget which when lakhs of the faithful gather to have a look.
Some worship stone,
Daulatabad
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The next stop is the supposedly grand Daulatabad fort, which can be seen from the road. It fails to impress though – I consider the Chitradurga fort grander. However, what one cannot take away from the fort is its storied past – founded by the Yadavas, it was controlled, at various times, by the Khiljis, Tughlaqs, Bahmanis, Nizam Shahis and Mughals. In the Indian mind, it is especially remembered as the place to which the eccentric Tughlaq emperor, Mohammad bin, shifted from Delhi lock, stock and barrel and then for no reason shifted back after four years. The entire population was forced to shift with him and millions died in the process. The whole episode is so much part of the Indian consciousness that even today if a parent finds a child doing something stupid, he or she would be admonished to not act like Tughlaq. The fort has the usual fort accessories, moats minus the crocodiles, dark passages and steep flights of stairs, turrets and cannons. There is also a Tower of the Moon which is a fairly tall structure but closed currently and inaccessible.
Bibi Ka Maqbara
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This is the main attraction of Aurangabad and literally means Tomb of the Wife. Given Aurangzeb’s contempt for pomp and fondness for open graves, it fell to his son Azam Shah to build a fitting mausoleum for his mother. A resource crunch meant that this tomb would never rival its more famous predecessor the Taj Mahal. It however is modeled on it and has a striking resemblance though the material and workmanship is of inferior quality. It is definitely worth a visit and seemed to be one of Aurangabad’s popular evening hangouts.
Panchakki
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Literally meaning water mill, this 250 year old contraption, utilizes water piped from a spring 6 km away, to rotate a vaned wheel, the motion of which is then transferred to a corn-grinder. Apparently this was set up at the behest of Aurangzeb for supplying ground flour to his guru as well as for poor people. There is a mysterious Russian connection as well, as the maker of the contraption is supposedly a saint from Bukhara.
Lonar crater
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After two days of marveling at the ingenuity of our ancestors, it was time to be reminded of the grandeur and beauty of non-man made objects; Lonar crater situated about 130 km due east of Aurangabad is perfectly suited to do just this. Formed by a meteor hitting the earth in the Pleistocene, about 50,000 years ago, it is about 2 km in diameter and easily dwarfs human achievements on the temporal and spatial scales. Supposedly the only hypervelocity meteoritic impact crater on basaltic rock, it has, at the bottom, a 1 km diameter lake which is alkaline in nature. The crater has its own ecosystem and has been extensively studied by geologists, naturalists, astronomers and archeologists. Several Hemadpanti temples dot the rim of the lake and one can walk around it in a couple of hours. Ramesh Rathod Naik was the Lambani tribal who guided us around and explained the various sights and sounds though some, like the supposed call of foxes, seemed a little dubious. The beautiful Daitya Sudan temple in Lonar town is a good example of Chalukyan architecture and well worth a visit. It was built to commemorate Vishnu’s victory over the demon Lonasur who was supposedly hiding in the Lonar lake. Ramesh explained that some of the lake temples were connected with the asuras – in particular he pointed out places where the asura guru Shukracharya was supposed to have done tapasya.
That evening, we went shopping and bought Himroo saris and shawls, for which Aurangabad is famous as well as a batik print of Padmapani; we could only gawk at the Paithani sarees which started at a price of 6,000 being woven of gold threads.
We didn’t have time to visit the Aurangabad caves, again a cave complex just outside Aurangabad.
Shani singanapur
It was time to appease the planets, in fact the most malevolent of them all Shani and what better place to do it than in Shani Singanapur, about 70 km from Aurangabad. We hired the same taxi and as soon as the car stopped, touts descended on us. Only freshly bathed, loin cloth-clad men can worship the Shani enshrined here in the form of a black stone (women and fully clothed men have to just watch from a distance). I asked the tout whether we were allowed to keep our underwears and this sent him into a giggling frenzy and he actually shook my hand. Vivid images of the three of us (Naresh, Ajay and I) in nothing but loincloths kept flashing in my head and I declined to have the honour of bathing Shani with my own hands. Ajay and Naresh went through the motions and got taken for more than a thousand bucks. One myth that has been propagated is that there is no theft in this place and hence there are no locks or even doors in this place. Anything to get a guy into a loincloth.
Shirdi
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A further 70 km and you are in Shirdi, birthplace of a holy man of recent times Sai Baba. He lived in the last century and preached unity of all religions and is credited with many miracles. His tomb is housed in a large complex (he himself was a homeless fakir) and crowds are regulated through long queues. Here too the touts got us, and we quickly found ourselves saddled with a variety of puja items like cloth offerings, sweets and so on to the tune of around 750 Rs. After wading through the queues and emerging at the other end, I found dogs peacefully sleeping in the warm winter sun.
Nashik
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About 85 km from Shirdi is Nashik, one of the Hindu holy cities – site of many incidents of the Ramayana and one of the hosts of the Kumbh mela, once in 12 years (the other hosts are Prayag, Haridwar and Ujjain). Nashik is a fairly clean place (not the bathing ghats or the water as we were to find out) by Indian standards and we took up lodgings near the railway station at 700 a night for four people. We visited the Muktidham temple (I vaguely remember staying there on a visit 20 years back), a modern construction which didn’t inspire me spiritually or otherwise and turned in early as we had an early start next day.
Triambak &Brahmagiri
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Next morning, we headed to Triambak, a small pilgrim town close to Nashik, famous for being the site of yet another of the 12 jyotirlingas. Here the lingam is in the ground and one can only gape at it from a distance. There are supposedly three spots on the lingam representing Brahma, Vishnu and Siva and a mirror is helpfully provided but atleast I couldn’t make out much. The temple is fit for a god or several with its grand architecture in black stone. I liked it much better than Ghrishneswar though one can get a hands-on experience in the latter. The real appeal of Triambak for me lies behind the temple, in the Brahmagiri hills where the Godavari originates. It is a good 2-3 hour hike up fairly steep slopes to the small temple where the Godavari starts as a small spring and a slight traverse to another small shrine where the Godavari is supposed to be flowing over Siva’s matted locks. One can only guess at the amount of water contained in underground caverns in the mountains to maintain such a steady supply for millennia. The day we were there, the winter sun shone bright flooding the hills and vales with a cosy warmth even as a gentle breeze ruffled the golden grass; if gods dwell anywhere, it should be in places like this. A sideways traverse to another mountain brings one to yet another shrine with its own legends. Further across is a small cave where the sage Gautama and his wife Ahalya are supposed to have lived and further still are caves where the mahasiddhas Goraknath and his guru Matsyendranath meditated. Further still, in the distance, was another temple atop another hill but we could picture our driver tearing his hair out and reluctantly started back. The way down is again dotted with this shrine or that, each connected with some important mythological incident – I remember one where there is a tree which Rama pierced with an arrow such that the Godavari flows through it. Interesting though it was, I didn’t stop to investigate it. When we reached our car finally after 5 hours, we found our driver sitting with his head in his hands and beseeching his god Allah the Almighty to show the way to the infidels. He tried to remonstrate with us for the delay but being the nice guy that he was, all he could do was to flail his hands around. We reassured him that we wouldn’t keep him much longer and asked him to head to Pandu Lena or Pandava’s caves.
Pandu Lena
=========
About 8 km from Nashik are yet another set of around 20 rock cut caves, again primarily Buddhist. Apart from the usual features of such caves, these also have inscriptions of various kinds and these looked like Greek letters but have been attributed to the Satavahanas. After exploring these for about an hour and narrowly escaping being mugged, we got back and headed for our final destination in Nashik, Panchavati.
Panchavati
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Literally meaning the Place of Five trees, this is an area around the Godavari Ghats in downtown Nashik with enormous mythological significance. You will be told that such and such an incident in the Ramayana took place in such and such a spot – Sita was hid in a cave here, Shoorpanakha’s nose was cut here, Sita was abducted by Ravana here and so on. Interestingly, the only temple to Laxmana is located in an area called Tapovan which is also the site where tents for the Kumbh Mela will be pitched once in 12 years. The last one in Nashik was in 2003 and if the world does not end, the next one will be in 2015. Having sent away the driver, we explored this place on our own. Of the many temples dotting the region, the Kala Ram Mandir is worth visiting for its spacious feel, blackstone buildings and restful atmosphere. I lay down in one of its wide corridors and slept soundly for an hour while the others sat around, dozed and shopped.
Mumbai
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We left Nashik the next day on a morning train with Ajay, my aunt and I bound for Mumbai while Naresh was supposed to reach Bhandardhara, take up lodgings there and wait for me to join him for further loafing in the area. A journey to CST gave me a glimpse of the dynamics of the local trains though they were nowhere near their peakhour performances. I left the next morning for Bhandardhara going first to Kasara about 100 km away by a local and then thenceforth by a rickety ST bus. Ajay and our aunt boarded the train for Tirupati.
Bhandardhara
============
I reached B’dhara around 1:30 in the afternoon even though I had left home at 6:45 in the morning, the reason being a missed local (I had to wait an hour and a half in Kalyan) and the not inconsiderable distance of around 160 km, part of it on mountainous roads. I arrived to find Naresh in bed with an upset stomach and the first afternoon and evening were spent just hanging around Lake Arthur (Anthur on the Eicher map) and taking in the views of the mountains around. Naresh had put his one day stay to good use and knew several paths in and out of the hotel; this helped us in avoiding the touts who had again begun to sniff the air. We repulsed all such advances and proceeded to climb Kalsubai the next morning. Unlike most other hills that I have climbed, many of the mountains here do not have a preamble. They are not hidden behind rows and rows of hills that need to be crossed. This one just rears up about 700 metres or more and is clearly visible from the road. The closest village from which to start the hike is Bari about 12 km from B’dhara. After reinforcing ourselves with a breakfast of Poha and tea from a roadside shop, we proceed in Kalsubai’s direction; before long, we are accosted by another “guide” who wanted only a modest 150 Rs. Having been fleeced left and right by touts of all hues till now, we were pleased by this minor demand and took him on. Khando has a tribal face and is light and strong like a wild animal and is soon bounding ahead on the steep slopes. Soon Naresh cannot keep up and flops to the ground while I can barely keep up. Naresh stays down while Khando and I go for the peak; within an hour and a half of some steep climbing and in places ascending ladders driven into the rock, we are on the peak where Kalsubhai is resplendent as a rock painted in orange. This is the highest point in Maharashtra and the views are unending in all directions, but for the fog. One can see Arthur lake, Behae lake, the three forts Alang, Kulung and Mulung and the Harischandra range of mountains. Strong mountain winds blow and pituks hold themselves aloft as if suspended by invisible strings. Khando has the voracious appetite of an animal and after devouring the food I have (apples, oranges, puffed rice) grabs some food from some other groups that have come up in the mean time. He tries to shake me at the top and hang around some more and eat and extort dakshinas from the visitors but I would have none of it and asks him to guide me down. He does this cheerfully enough and demands an extra 50 at the end which I cheerfully give. He tries to clean us out some more by offering lunch but we have had enough of being had and head to our morning eatery and have a lunch of rice, watery dal, rotis and bhakri (jowar rotis). Then we start walking in the direction of Bari and manage to get picked up by a bus which heads to our next destination Randha falls. This is somewhat reminiscent of the Ajanta falls but is much taller. The region of the falls is railed off and one has to just watch it from a distance. The roar and echo of the falls in the canyon is soothing and we try to doze on the edge of the canyon rim. However, as Naresh says, this is sleeping under extreme conditions and we quickly get up before we find ourselves at the canyon bottom. Apart from the falls, the main attraction in the area is a seller of Kandhamool, an orange coloured (on the outside) and white (inside) cylindrical shaped object slices of which are being sold at the rate of 3 for 5. These have a familiar taste which I still am not able to place and are sold coated with a layer of sugar. After partaking of these and spending an hour, we decide to leave but cannot find a ride. Apart from the unreliable ST buses, the other mode of transport in these parts is the jeep which is usually jam packed with people even hanging out on the roof. As no bus is in sight, we finally decide to take a jeep and I find myself wedged between the jeep body and Naresh who is likewise wedged between the dashboard and the seat apart from being sandwiched between me and another passenger. The driver is halfway out the right door and I help maintain symmetry by being halfway out the left. We manage to arrive without much damage (my left hip is still sore) and leave the next morning for Mumbai which we reach by 3.00. Naresh heads to IIT Bombay while I head to my aunt’s house and thence to Dadar to catch my ride back to Bengaluru.
- Ranga Kidambi
Hey theres an "r"missing in the word Shirdi under the subhead "Nashik". Its typed as shidi !
ReplyDeleteFixed it. Thanks! :-)
ReplyDelete