On the 14 th , my mom and I started the day early with a tour of the Ellora caves. These are a series of Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain caves carved out of the volcanic basalt between the 6 th and 10 th centuries. Our tour guide was a man in his 20’s named Sanjay. I was a little skeptical of hiring a guide for the cave tour, unsure that it would add much to the experience, but I was greatly mistaken—Sanjay was great and our visit to the caves would not have been nearly as interesting without him. The caves are unimaginably huge, carved out of the basalt hillside by the hands of thousands of workers with chisel and hammer. These workers included chiselers who took large sections of rock out, detailers, painters, rock carriers (rock had to be hauled out of the caves in buckets), tool sharpeners, and others needed to keep the work camp running (managers, cooks, etc.). The making of each cave must have been quite an operation. My favorite of the caves was a Buddhist cave specially desig...
ReplyDeleteThanks for the pics, Tavish, esp. for the photo of the chameleon. I guess I’ve seen one of those fabulous National Geo images of a chameleon somewhere, but yours looked much more realistic. The picture of the fenced garden made me wonder what critters represent the most trouble for gardeners in your part of Senegal. Here, it’s deer, hands-down. They roam everywhere in the suburbs of Chapel Hill, morning, noon, and night.
Uncle Bill