The Queens at (of?) Ajanta & Ellora

[And when Nedine (from South-Africa, 2 years in India), Stephane (from Mauritius, vistiting India for 10 days), Jeremy (from France, living in India for a few months) and Kama (from Mauritius, in India for 5 years) set out on a week-end trip to Ajanta & Ellora, what can happen?? Here's a special report!]

The week-end to Ajanta and Ellora was a long-awaited one for our four travelers. Four minds and four bodies set themselves onto a week-end get-away:

The first one in an attempt at quenching her curious thirst for a neighborhood that she had heard about for two years but never saw with her own eyes;

The second one ambitiously feeding on the geographical dregs of India: a land he’s been attempting to enshroud alive in his mind for five years now (it is to be noted that all through, he traveled everywhere but somehow skipped whatever was close to home [i.e. Pune], taking it for granted. So it was high time to catch up!);

The third one, as a substitute for a Taj Mahal that he would never see. Yet, the rationale was still a quest for something ‘Indian’ and ‘mysterious’, which may not have had anything to do with a Queen or a proof of love, but the caves would speak of mythical Gods and Goddesses, he was sure (or did he simply trust the others blindly?);

The forth one on yet another exotic Indian week-end trip where history, mystery, guessing, inquisitiveness, an open-mind and a lot of “unfair ripping off” would occur, but Euros is the price to pay to be a European star I guess…

So we have our four characters in place; let’s set the stage ready, and may the story unfold!

Our week-end begins at 06:30am at Shivaji Nagar (yeah, they all somehow managed to make it early enough out there on a Saturday morning) with catching a Volvo that would take our four heroes to Aurangabad. A long journey it was, like a snake that uncoils its 250 kms body at a rate of 45 kms per hour, and it dragged along and dragged along to the point where this slithering road shed a skin of sleep, of watching bits and pieces of a Bollywood film, of reading, cribbing, or major neck pain… [ref to pics]

As for the fellow-Indian travelers on the journey, they quite normally and not the least surprisingly enjoyed the long journey by eating oily food at every stop, and sleeping (or watching the Bollywood film whenever they were not eating or sleeping.)

This is the point where the first highlight of the trip needs to be brought about:

One of our characters, a white man with blonde hair, reminiscent of the old colonizers, and in his own terms “the post-modern neo-colonialism” (or was it the “post-colonial neo-modernism”?— whatever that is supposed to mean) happened be a victim of his own foreignness, a form of fatality that the entire group of four would have to face: no acceptance in hotels, increased prices of about everything, search for passports, above average harassment by rickshaw-wallahs, a constant attention from kids, beggars and whomever else would cross their way, a voyeuristic unfailing gaze, and a lot of pictures taken with perfect strangers… In short, a Hollywood star lost in a Mahastrian landscape within a flush of paparazzi: for the purpose of our story we’ll call him the Hollywood actor.

On the other side, the next highlight of the trip was the presence of a Bollywood actor, a Saif Ali Khan of the sorts: fair (a very important element as per Indian criteria), slim, hot and well-kept, stylish, a head in the sky that would never stoop to look down, and always (and here we accentuate ALWAYS) ready to please his fans: be it kids, beggars, road-side sellers etc. Holding true to his Bollywood image, he advertised Coca-Cola throughout the trip—what with such heat!— buying a bottle at the rate of one every three hours! This was our Saif Ali Khan, the man of good looks and great hair style whose Acqua Di Gio of Giorgio Armani would allow his fans to recognize his smell in a radius of 5 kms, driving them as crazy as a mob of fat middle-class moustached Maharashtrian men fighting over a Wada Pav or a seat in a bus. So one of the major highlight of the trip can be summed up as follows: When Hollywood meets Bollywood!! (in a queer space and time for sure, but the point is that they met and merged, or at least so we would like to believe.)

And when Bollywood meets Hollywood!


This encounter being in the lime-light, our two other characters (as you can see in the picture) happened to remain in the shadows of the caves… present, yet inconspicuous and barely seen, at least to the Indian eyes.

They thus remained like those unseen figures behind a camera, those that make the film, but that are never seen: the week-end unfolded as the narrative of a meeting between Hollywood and Bollywood without any mention of the two light-bearers (who also happened to be the sound technicians, the script-writers and the editors!) They actually enlightened and narrated the week-end through arguments in a foreign tongue, with decisions about the 'wheres' and the 'whens' and the 'whats' of finding a place to sleep, looking for a driver, finding the right bus, or simply deciding what to eat—and negotiate of course, for whom else would do all the bargaining for the stars! At times, they even acted like guides for the stars: what with a Lonely Planet that screams: I-Am-A-Visit-India-Dictionary?!

It is true however that our two other unobtrusive characters also had fits of hysteria (the latter being a highly contagious disease, particularly when accompanied by music from an I-Phone), moments of association with both Bollywood and Hollywood (proximity can be dangerous), deep needs to mention that they were from Pondicherry (being Indian without being Indian being the only way to save Rs 245!), and one of them (guess whom? Who guesses right wins a chocolate!) was simply carried along like a hand-bag turned into a fetish (for a palanquin?), an exhibit of the sorts carried in the most inhumane and degrading manner by a Hollywood actor who refused to let go of his hand: “Am gonna hold it, and never let it go!”

But enough has been said about the characters: what about the setting itself? The entire purpose of the journey? Ajanta & Ellora proved to be insightful, a glimpse into an alternative mode of history and self-representation, while at the same time merging the lines between the wonders of Gods and men, and all through presenting a proof of beauty, and the strength and might of creativity, a Colerigean Kubla Khan carved in stone.

The most impressive feat of architecture was probably the Kailasa Temple at Ellora. Built, or rather carved circa 750 AD, it is an ambitious and highly imposing rock-cut temple that is a representation of Mt Kailasa, Shiva’s abode in the Himalayas. The entire temple was carved out of a mountain, yes, you read it right, carved out of a mountain with trenches cut into the cliff from the sides and the top such that approximately 20,000 tonnes of stone had to be removed in the building process of this wonder. In short, it did look like an over-aspiring sculpture straight out of a mountain, with sculptural decorations depicting scenes from the Mahabharat and the Ramayana. The rest of Ellora is divided into three series of caves with the Buddhist, the Hindu and the Jain sculptures.

Leaving, Ellora our famous four headed to Daulatabad, which was another adventure altogether. Thirteen kilometers from Aurangabad, Daulatabad is a fortress on a hilltop. What initially seemed like a fortress on a hilltop however soon turned out to be a historical site that paved its way to the sky. On the program: climbing, climbing, and more climbing! Two of our heroes, or should I say the Hollywood hero with his fetish somehow managed to make it to the very top. Our two other (anti)-heroes gave up mid-way, which seemed wiser for they actually got to enjoy the scenery and the peace around, and not pant and masochistically indulge in the burning pain of their muscles unlike our two other climbers. The entire ascent took them more than one hour and by the time of the decent, we had four exhausted minds and four zombified bodies who earnt the hearty right to swallow two glasses of sugar-cane juice each (except for our Bollywood hero who was still on his Coke campaign.)

Dead brains, dead muscles, dead thoughts:

direction the Maharashtra Tourism Hotel for the night (Rs 700/room with all facilities and a garden restaurant with a pathetic service but decent food and beer!)

The Sunday proved to be another adventure altogether for our four characters. The stage would change its clothing for the Ajanta caves, a three hours journey where more Coke advertisements were on the program! Being at Ajanta was close to marathon, an attempt to cover, see, admire, criticize and understand the thirty caves, all in a shoe-horse shape. Amongst others, an attempt at understanding Buddhism better, a search for princesses and slaves and kings and queens and magic snakes on the painted frescoes [the Ajanta ‘frescoes’ are technically not frescoes at all. A fresco is a painting done on a wet surface that absorbs the colour; the Ajanta paintings are more correctly tempera, since the artists used animal glue and vegetable gum mixed with the paint pigments to bind them on the dry surface. Source: The Lonely Planet]

Throughout a day, our travelers fed on more caves and more sculptures. They slowly slid into the darkness of another time, another space, another history that wanted to narrate itself. However, they also felt sad that the Ajanta Caves (it was a Sunday, so no wonder) had been barbarously taken over by hordes and hordes of families and friends who turned up with every second cousin thinking the adventure would be something close to a picnic. The herds shouted, they brawled, they ran around, in short, the Caves lost much of their aura and could not be appreciated and studied with reference to their fair value.

The week-end proved to be a long one, but the journey back seemed even longer... Our four minds cloaked into four exhausting bodies found their way back on a 2x2 non-a/c, and non-air-suspension bus to Pune! This was the peak point of the week-end: kids had urinated on the alloted seat of our Hollywood hero (yet he kept his peace and sat there for 6 hours), a psychotic serial killer sat besides the other heroes, and all that after a family of eight had managed to fit into 3 seats and shared half of the journey with them!!

If we are to conclude anything, it is that our four characters found the Aurangabad-Ajanta-Ellora week-end up to their expectations, may be even, beyond their expectations: one was more physically tired than he expected to be, another more irritated than he should have been, a thrid more hyper and hysterical than she already was, and finally the last character felt more like a Queen than he ever expected to be! Delightfully however, they all went back more rich... somehow!