The result of at least 100 years of intense labour, the Kailash Temple at Ellora is simply breathtaking
The main attractions near Aurangabad are the cave temple complexes of Ellora and Ajanta, and for them it's worth putting up with any amount of social asphyxiation. I spent Thursday 19th at Ellora, and it was simply magnificent.
Television and computers must be the most destructive forces known to man, because before either of these (excellent) developments came along, man actually achieved things. The caves at Ellora are prime examples of what man can do if he doesn't get hooked on soap operas or videogames, and instead is desperate for something else to alleviate the boring nature of his existence. Faith might move mountains, but you've got to have a hell of a lot more than faith if you're going to dig temples out of rock faces.
Or should I say into rock faces. The temples of Ellora are as big and as impressive as any others you will see in India, but here they're literally made out of single, complete pieces of stone: before, there was a hill of rock, and after all the whittling and chipping there stood (and still stands) a complex multi-storey temple, smothered in intricate carvings, towers, statues and plenty of cool rooms for meditative reflection.
A sculpture of Siva in Cave 29
There are three main areas of temples at Ellora: the collection of Buddhist temples, constructed around 600 to 800 AD; the Hindu temples, built between 600 and 900 AD; and the Jain temples, built somewhere between 800 and 1000 AD. The varied styles of the 34 caves are wonderfully diverse, from the austere and peaceful meditative atmosphere of the Buddhist temples and the overwhelming grandeur and pomposity of the Hindu offerings, to the halfway house of the Jain constructions, which manage to combine aspects of both of the previous areas into a uniquely different religion.
Hard to describe, the main temple in the complex – the Kailash Temple – is a masterpiece. Built by digging down vertically into a mountainside and forming the whole temple complex from the top down, it is estimated that simply quarrying the three million cubic feet of rock (about 200,000 tonnes) must have taken at least 100 years; the complex covers twice the area of the Parthenon and is 1.5 times as high; and the whole thing is literally made out of a mountain. It is, not surprisingly, a breathtaking sight. Put simply, Ellora makes the mind boggle, which, one assumes, is the whole point.
