If you happened to catch a Discovery series on India, you might have heard the names Ajanta and Ellora. They are two of the most celebrated historical sites in India ranked just below the Taj Mahal. As you might have seen by G’s post, this statement should not be taken lightly! Each site has over 30 hand carved caves dedicated to Buddhist, Hindu, or Jain worship. What is really cool is that some of of these temples are still in active use!

Being from the Indian Jones era (NOT counting the latest movie, bleh), it is only natural that as a child I was fascinated by ancient temples and ruins. Long before this trip I had dreamed of scouring the temple caves of a religion long forgotten. I even imagined encountering a multitude of diabolical booby-traps from which I managed a narrow escape. For this journey, however, things weren’t quite the same as the movies. I didn’t have an adventure-worn brown fedora, only a brown (and severely tortured) Adidas hat. Nor did I have a trusty whip, rather a headlamp and battery-hungry GPS. Ok so clearly I am a product of the digital age, but despite the differences, this trip is an adventure nonetheless!

We started our journey to Ellora from Aurangabad after a quick breakfast juice from our now-favorite Aurangabad hangout. Half an hour after asking the juice shop owner where to catch the best ride to the caves, we jumped aboard the local bus to Ellora, and a bumpy hour later we were dropped off at the entrance of the famed Unesco World Heritage site. Playing Dr. Jones as best as I could, I fingered the bill of my hat quickly, and then flipped it backwards. The adventure began.

I spent two minutes at the entrance purchasing tickets, and about 10 more scrambling around to find that I stupidly had left our Lonely Planet guide back in the hotel room. Slightly annoyed, and looking very confused and stupid, I looked left, and then right, and then was promptly approached by a teenager with a stack of books. Even looking like you are momentarily confused (or perpetually stupid) attracts the vendors like flies to…well, anyway.

“You need a guide sir?”

I looked left and right a couple more times, and then asked to see one of his products. Since we had no other source of information, and we both refused to hire a 500 rupee guide, we purchased the 50 rupee book and were on our way. Despite the multiple spelling errors, the small book proved helpful in finding the temples we really wanted to see. Time was precious, and there was no way we could see every one of the 30 intricately carved temples in a single day.

After a quick look in the new book, we decided to first head to the Jain temples at the northernmost part of the complex and then work our way south. The book suggested the opposite and to start at the Buddhist caves, but G and I agreed that we had seen quite a few Buddhist temples at Ajanta. We wanted to make sure we had the full experience at the Jain and Hindu temples by taking our time. Since it was a cloudy day, and I am awesome, I pulled out my compass and we worked our way north, passing a large number of black-faced, grey-furred monkeys.

The first cave was 2 kilometers north (that’s just over a mile for you US folk ;) ). Within half an hour we were at the first temple. The entrance way stood tall, towering over our heads. Inside the small complex there was a large stone verandha, guarded by a huge elephant.

As we walked closer to the temple rooms, we were amazed by the detailed carvings that covered the walls.

Of course a temple complex just wouldn’t be right without great scenery, and this little waterfall was it. G even managed to spot a cool watersnake in the pool below.

All the temples so far had been really cool. But then we reached the most insanely awesome temple in all of Ellora. Nothing at this site compared in size or intricacy. It took 100 YEARS to carve this temple out of the solid-rock mountainside. It is the largest monolithic temple structure in the entire world. It was crazy.

This place was so huge, it absolutely dwarfed us.

Ellora had everything from elephants to crazy carvings of Shiva. There were even stories carved into the temple’s side walls.

The coolest part was the fact that this temple is still in active use. We set our Tevas aside and walked into a pitch black room while firing up our headlamps. As we looked around, we saw people were sitting with their legs crossed on the ground praying. Others were standing around ushering pilgrims to move along to the temple’s holiest relics.

We walked 100 feet to a room in the far back before turning off our headlamps. It was barely lit by a few small candles that did little for visibility, and added a great deal to the creepiness factor. The small candles caused shadows to dance along the walls, as the pilgrims came and went. We stood in the room for a couple of minutes staring at the center of the room, and taking in the experience.

In the center of the room a round stone sat on a carved table. It was a “Shiva lingam” (which is, er, a fancy way of saying giant stone Shiva phallus). Water dripped from the ceiling onto the lingam as voices chanted Hindu prayers in the adjacent room.

The orange robes of the sadhus were barely visible to me when a hand reached out and grabbed my arm. The shadowed figure told me to ‘touch for good luck’. I placed my hand on the lingam, and felt a cold slimey texture. I didn’t know which was creepier: the fact that I was putting my hand on something cold and slimey in a dark, dank stone cave…or the fact that it was Shiva’s giant stone phallus. G and I stood there a minute more before walking back towards the temple’s entrance. Quickly.

Meanwhile, a crowd had formed in the dark below a carving of Shiva on the ceiling. If the lingam room wasn’t creepy enough, the carving on the ceiling sealed the deal.

A voice spoke from behind me and said that the carving ‘watches you’. Hindu followers found this reassuring, as Shiva is ever-watching. G and I both found it creepy. We pointed our headlamps at the ceiling and shot each other sideways looks as we watched the carved face follow our every step. Um…Freaky?

Now thoroughly creeped out, we left the Hindu temple.

Wanting to see the last few caves in the fading daylight, we made a mad last-minute dash to see some of the Buddhist temples at the complex. While the Hindus built their temple to house a holy phallus, the Buddhists decided to make this temple look oddly like a parking garage.

After the extravagant carvings and paintings we’d seen in the Buddhist temples at Ajanta, the rest of the Buddhist temples here couldn’t quite compare. The massive Hindu temple definitely took the cake for this day. I half-expected a boulder to chase me out the exit as I flipped my hat forward and switched off my GPS unit to end my big day as the 21st-century Dr. Jones.

We chowed down on some thali, then waited out on the street in the typical state of semi-confusion that always accompanies wondering when or if a bus will come to take us home. But this time, a shared jeep pulled up and offered a cheap – and immediate – ride back. It looked much roomier than a local bus and G said she had read that this was in fact a credible option, so I shook off my fears that they might kidnap and rape us and we hopped in. Naturally, the excessive room didn’t last long as we stopped every kilometer to pick up more people. At one point, there were 20 people crammed inside. This is a 10-person capacity Jeep, mind you. It took an uncomfortably crammed hour to reach Aurangabad, and although it was no temple of doom, it had been an adventure nonetheless.

Next we were headed to the jungle: the concrete jungle of Mumbai.

Be sure to check out the photos of the Ellora Caves in the album.