Friday, January 28, 2011

Star attraction at Ellora caves

 A trip to Maharashtra wouldn’t be complete without a visit to one of the many cave temples. We chose to visit the world-Heritage listed Ellora Cave temples which are made up of 34 caves over 5000 years old.  The caves have been chipped out by Buddhist, Hindu and Jain monks and are so intricately detailed it’s any wonder it took 150 odd years to complete.
Oddly enough Brent and I proved to be the main attraction and found ourselves being stopped and stared at by hundreds of Indian tourists. I can now confidently say my photograph is hanging on the walls of at least 50 odd Indian homes. On several occasions groups of passing school children literally swarmed me to practice a few phrases of their freshly learned English or to get a touch of my white skin. A fellow Westerner even took my photo which made me think I may have been mistaken for someone else or perhaps it was my hair (which is still in hundreds of tiny braids) that caused all the fuss. At one point, a group of people were crowded around a tree taking photos and I noticed it was full of monkeys. I walked over to join in the monkey fanfare and the crowd turned on me like paparazzi snapping away at me with their cameras and phones.
I only hope the people got enough satisfation out of the magnificent caves as they did out of me. It certainly was an interesting experience.





Buddhist Cave

Buddhist Cave
Me being swamped by children


Some trendy young boys

A ferocious monkey taking a drink

Cruising monkey

 

1 comment:

  1. love the pics hun but I must ask.. the second pic from top is he doing what I think hes doing?lol if so I have to ask WHYYYYY

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